B M IDE 
 
 

 Y 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 
 
A REVEREND IDOL 
 
 A NO^EL 
 
 
 FIFTEENTH EDITION 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 TICKNOR AND COMPANY 
 
 2ii Crrmont S-trrct 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1882, 
 BY JAMES B. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 JFranklm 
 
 RAND, AVERY, AND 
 BOSTON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CVAPTKB. PASE. 
 
 L AN UNWELCOME ENCOUNTEB . . 1 
 
 II. MISS MONNY SETTLES THE MlNISTEB . . 18 
 
 III. THE ARTIST 84 
 
 IV, THE MINISTER DOES NOT STAY SETTLED . 60 
 
 V. THE HOLY FATHERS ...... 68 
 
 VI. MAN CONTENDING WITH THE ELEMENTS. . 87 
 
 VII. -WOMAN DISMISSED TO THE KITCHEN . . 101 
 
 VIII. WOMAN S SPHERE 121 
 
 IX. THE Visrr OF "THE GOLDEN FLEECE". . 132 
 X. WOMAN S SPHERE MYSTERIOUSLY DISTURBED 
 
 BY MAN S 142 
 
 XI. A GREAT DISCOVERY 162 
 
 XII. THE HEROINE S BACK HAIB . . . .185 
 XIII. How TERTULLIAN BOUGHT A LOVE OP A 
 BONNET, AND ANOTHER WISE MAN MADE 
 
 MISCHIEF OUT OF THE BANDBOX . . . 206 
 
 XIV. TERTULLIAN PRESENTS THE BONNET . . 227 
 XV. THE NKW-YOEK WIDOW APPEARS ON THE 
 
 SCENE 235 
 
 XVI. THE SMALL BEGINNING OF A GREAT WOE . 250 
 
 XVII. THE LOVERS IN THE STUDIO .... 2G7 
 
 XVIII. MR. LEIGH PREACHES, AND THE WIDOW PLOTS, 279 
 
 XIX. BETROTHAL 289 
 
 XX. MONNY CONFIDES TO AUNT PERSY A SECRET 
 
 ADVENTURE OF HER SCHOOLDAYS . . 295 
 
 iii 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEB. PAGE, 
 
 XXI. CONCLUSION OF MONNY S STORY TO AUNT 
 
 PERSY 313 
 
 XXII. LOVERS TALK 337 
 
 XXIII. THE WIDOW MAKES HER FIRST STAB AT 
 
 MONNY 356 
 
 XXIV. SHE FOLLOWS UP THE ATTACK .... 375 
 XXV. DOUBLE GAME OF THE WIDOW . . 387 
 
 XXVI. How A TRUTHFUL GIRL MAY APPEAR TO A 
 
 MAN TO BE A LIAR 393 
 
 XXVII. MASCULINE AND FEMININE POINTS OF VIEW . 410 
 XXVIII. MONNY MAKES A LAST TERRIBLE STUDY OF 
 
 THE WOMAN-QUESTION- 417 
 
 XXIX. A MIDNIGHT INTERVIEW 428 
 
 XXX. CONCLUSION . . 437 
 
iQ6i 
 
 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 ; 
 
 THE great preacher of St. Ancient s had just arrived 
 at his summer lodgings. These were a front cham 
 ber and a back one, under the roof of Mistress Doane, 
 widow of Capt. Azariah Doane, drowned mariner of 
 Cape Cod. As the new-comer disappeared up stairs, 
 his landlady remarked that "he didn t exactly look like 
 a minister ; but twas certain he was a regular high-born 
 gentleman, because he stepped right into things just as 
 he found them, putting on no airs at all." And black 
 Susannah, the only audience which the widow had for 
 her comments, replying with whatsoever comments of her 
 own on the stranger, forthwith alluded to him as his 
 Honor. Nor could any instructions about the proper 
 distributing of titles among the professions ever after 
 prevail on her to drop this fashion of designating the 
 Rev. Kenyon Leigh. 
 
 "His Honor" (he had, by the way, this approximate 
 claim to Susannah s peculiar term of distinction, that he 
 was the son of a judge) was stepping meanwhile from 
 one to another of his chamber-windows to see the \\ide 
 view therefrom, which nothing intercepted, save, at one 
 window, the overshadowing boughs of a Balm-of-Gilead 
 tree, which had grown to quite an imposing size for a 
 Cape-Cod tree. 
 
 1 
 
2 A EEVEBEND IDOL. 
 
 Mrs. Doane was right. Although there was nothing in 
 the stranger s mien or dress which jarred on your idea of 
 a minister, when you found that he was one, still you 
 would never have taken him at first sight for a minister, 
 even of the Muscular Saint variety. No : while he was 
 a most uncommonly tall, powerfully-built man, the very 
 last of characters which he suggested was the type popu 
 larly known as the athletic clergyman. Intellectuality 
 predominated in him rather than animal spirits. 
 
 Just now he had the look of a man glad, for some 
 reason, to reach the desert; and a desert it was which 
 stretched before him. The ,vast sweep of the open 
 Atlantic, its shore scarcely more than half a mile distant 
 from the front of the house, bounded the horizon ; while 
 away to one side, the gray tower and fantastic arms of 
 a windmill, a few weather-beaten roofs of the little village 
 of Lonewater, to which the widow Doane s house nomi 
 nally belonged, but from which it was quite outlying, 
 these were the sole signs of human life in the landscape. 
 All else was a strange, rolling waste of sand-hills, only 
 broken here and there by little belts of pine-trees and 
 shrub-oaks, which wfth the golden masses of the poverty- 
 grass, still in bloom, touched the sand-heaps and their 
 hollows with some hues not wholly unbeautiful to the eye, 
 however little they might promise of harvest. 
 
 All this lonely scene being apparently just what the 
 present spectator had desired to find, he took up his port 
 manteau with a well- pleased look, and descended from hia 
 grand front apartment with upright walls, into the back 
 bedroom with walls at every angle, which completed his 
 suite. This second chamber was entered going down by 
 a step ; for the house, a double one, and two-storied in 
 front, apparently had several fractions of stories behind, 
 descending, by gradations, under the long back roof, 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 8 
 
 sloping slowly to the earth. It was an aichitectural style 
 marked by a decided originality in windows, which, 
 punched in all sizes and at all levels of distribution 
 through the sides of the house, made an effect without 
 .rather unique. 
 
 The insane windows, however, freely admitted air, and 
 all things were of spotless neatness ; and the traveller, as 
 if reminded to make himself so, directly proceeded to 
 wash the dust of a July journey from his face. During 
 this ceremony he wound up the looking-glass a couple 
 of feet or so, whereby a great bunch of peacock s tail- 
 feathers, which had ornamented its top, went flying into 
 the water-basin below. Considerately fishing out these 
 plumes, he wandered back with them into the front apart 
 ment, where he stuck them, dripping, over a brazen image 
 of the god Brahma, which was the centre-piece of the 
 mantel there, rich with other such heathen trophies, brought 
 by the departed Capt. Azariah from over the sea. 
 
 Having laid about him with a few more of these initial 
 strokes of re-arrangement, such as are wont to characterize 
 a man s entrance upon feminine premises, he seemed to 
 consider himself quite domiciled, and returned to the front 
 windows, again to revel in the delightful solitariness of 
 the prospect. And, lo ! the fair Sahara had contracted a 
 blot. One would have said, from the change in the man s 
 face, that that brazen Fate on the mantel suddenly con 
 fronted him in some spectacle without. This was singu 
 lar, for the new object in the landscape would generally 
 have been considered a charming one. It was an uncom 
 monly pretty girl, uncommonly the centre of masculine 
 admiration ; and she was making straight for the house. 
 There was, in fact, a group of three maidens, all more 
 or less pretty, escorted by three young men ; but the 
 pretty girl, whom they called by the boa id ing-school- 
 
4 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 romance name of Monny Rivers, seemed to require some 
 quantum of attention from all the beaux, and to receive 
 it, by whatever mysterious charm, without alienating her 
 fair companions. 
 
 The six creatures were all dressed in perfect style for 
 the occasion. They were undeniably urban carpet-baggers 
 to this world s end which their disgusted observer from 
 the chamber-window had intended solely to carpet-bag 
 himself. Whatever nonsense the belle was uttering as 
 the laughing group came on, there was plainly no end to 
 it ; and, as the rest of the party strolled slowly along to 
 a vehicle which Mr. Leigh now perceived was in waiting 
 for them at the head of the lane which led towards the 
 sea, who but she opened the gate, clearly as an habituee 
 of the place, and ran up the walk into the house ? Yea, 
 up to the very chamber opposite his own, he heard her 
 tripping feet ascend, whence, securing some matter of 
 extra wraps for her friends, she presently returned to 
 her attendant cavalie: at the door, who, taking the 
 shawls, escorted the young lady back to rejoin the others. 
 
 They were scarcely clear of the house when the minister 
 went down stairs with an immediate word which he had 
 to say to his landlady. In her neat sitting-room he found 
 the pleasant-faced dame (approaching sixty) who had 
 received him on his arrival, and put to her the directest 
 questions as to the number of her family. 
 
 11 Perfectly quiet," replied Mrs. Doane. "No family 
 but myself and one boarder ; and she the loveliest young 
 lady from the city, as is the greatest favorite with every 
 body, and is going to stay here all the summer through 
 now. And she was in the house a moment ago, but is 
 gone away riding a while with her friends." 
 
 4 Yes, I saw her," said the minister, with a certain 
 simplicity he had of speaking the truth ; and, turning 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 5 
 
 abruptly, he vanished at once from the room, leaving his 
 landlady to lift astonished hands that ever a man, even 
 a minister, who had seen Monny Rivera s face, should 
 not l)e pleased with the idea of having her round. For 
 plainly she had discerned that the new boarder was no\ 
 pleased with that prospect. 
 
 Deeply pondering the mystery, she concluded, at last, 
 that he must be apprehensive lest the whole six whom h 
 had seen together would be haunting the house, to the 
 making of more stir than he desired. So she resolved to 
 take up-stairs a little pitcher of root-beer as a good seda 
 tive for the ruffled nerves of a weary traveller, and im 
 prove this errand to inform him incidentally that her young 
 lady s friends were only very transient visitors at the Cape. 
 Two of the young men, indeed, in the trio who escorted 
 the belle, had each respectively a sister in the two young 
 ladies accompanying her. It was in pretended devotion 
 to these relatives, that the brothers had included Lone- 
 water in their summer touring ; but in truth the latter had 
 exhausted all the arts known to fraternal cajolery to per 
 suade their sisters, school-friends of Miss Monuy, to set 
 foot in the dull hamlet for an hour. As for the third 
 admirer, he pursued this worshipped maid with no subter 
 fuge of a sister to sustain him. But for no one of the 
 three rivals who had met so unexpectedly in the village 
 on the same errand, had Miss Monny any preference 
 which would encourage a prolonging of their stay. 
 
 Of all this Mrs. Doane was well aware, as she had 
 much more than a summer landlady s acquaintance with 
 her young boarder; for the latter had had as nuise, 
 Mirough several years of her childhood, a poor cousin of 
 Mis. Doane s, through which lowly relation the Cape-Cod 
 widow s house had come to be, from time to time, a sum 
 mer resort of Miss Rivers ever since. 
 
6 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 So, now, the good woman, gathering herself up, made 
 ready her innocent stratagem of beer, and ascended to 
 the presence of the distinguished new arrival to offer the 
 same, and drop the renewed assurance that Lonewater 
 was the most retired place in the world, and that Miss 
 Rivers s friends were all to leave in a day or two, when 
 the young lady would be perfectly quiet and alone. This 
 promise of having the society of the belle solely to him 
 self did but add another shade to the already shadowed 
 clerical brow, as Mrs. Doane failed not to observe. And 
 although the minister politely accepted, whether he drank 
 of the jorum or not, her pitcher of refreshment, she had 
 scarce regained her room when she saw him go forth for 
 a walk, not seaward, but straight back towards the vil 
 lage. Whoever had followed him would have seen that 
 his private errand was to seek there a rather ample-look 
 ing house, abode of one Capt. Gawthrop ; which house, he 
 had incidentally learned during his ride from the village, 
 had accommodations for boarders. It was, in fact, the 
 place where Miss Rivers s admirers, enduring each other 
 under the same roof as best they could, were at present 
 quartered ; and the inquiries which Mr. Leigh now has 
 tened to make at this door suggested a possible change 
 of his own lodgings thither when the rooms should be 
 vacant. 
 
 In explanation of this mysterious behavior of the Rev. 
 Kenyon Leigh, who was an unmarried man of thirty-four, 
 it must be said that he was adored of women. There 
 had been a good many years now of his single estate to 
 attract these adorations in ; and the tragical thing was, 
 that, as he grew older, young girls worshipped him all 
 the same and a good deal more, while the maturer maid 
 ens and young widows naturally put more personal hope 
 into their devotions : so time brought to this suffocate* 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 7 
 
 idol no relief, but an ever- widen ing circle of the incense- 
 burners. This pernicious atmosphere, however, had not 
 quite spoilt our hero into that most intolerable of cox 
 combs, tl\e man who fancies every woman must be in love 
 with him, although his apprehensions at sight of a pretty 
 girl so far his junior, and surrounded by her beaux, 
 might seem to imply something very absurd in that direc 
 tion. The best of men will have moments which by no 
 means represent their normal mood and character ; and 
 we beg that Mr. Leigh s proceedings be not prematurely 
 judged ; although he did so prolong his ramble as to return 
 late enough to take tea alone, and then requested break 
 fast to be served to him next morning in his own apart 
 ment. At dinner and tea of that day, as it chanced, 
 Miss Rivers was herself absent : so he escaped for four 
 meals the pretty girl of whom he made such an extraor 
 dinary bete noir. 
 
 But on the second day, as the young lady returned home 
 a little before bedtime, the motherly Mrs. Doane came 
 to her chamber with some good-night gossip, and a kero 
 sene lamp to aid the dim candle which was winking there. 
 In these lights one saw a rounded girlish figure, of aver 
 age L eight, but more than the average vitality of young 
 American maidens. As Monny exchanged her costume 
 of the day for a loose dressing-sack, there were revealed 
 arms and shoulders moulded like those of some sculptured 
 goddess : the exceeding beauty of the girl s hands, in 
 deed, had cost her dearly in one adventure of her life, 
 whose consequences were not yet past. Her face might 
 not have been considered to possess the ideal perfection 
 of her figure, as the features were irregular; but it was 
 still a very lovely and charming head, eyes of the darkest 
 brown, and hair of the lightest hue that could lie culled 
 brown at all ; not auburn, but golden in its high lights, 
 
8 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 and with just a hint of warm brown in the shadows. 
 She had cheeks that dimpled as she smiled, very white 
 and perfect teeth, and a complexion like morning lighi 
 The rare-hued hair curled naturally ; not in tight ringlets, 
 but in large, loose, rolling twines, that lent themselves 
 readily to any style of coiffure : as they were all shaken 
 down now in complete dishevelment, the girl looked fair 
 as a vision. It was a picture in which wealth of color 
 and expression atoned for the want of classic features. 
 
 Mrs. Doaue, thinking, as she had often done before, 
 that her young boarder was the prettiest girl alive, was 
 led on in these leisurely moments to talk of the masculine 
 new-comer who so strangely saw in this radiant inmate 
 a drawback to her house. The latter, I should here 
 remark, not having heard of everybody in her young life, 
 had never distinctly heard of the illustrious Kenyon 
 Leigh, until she had heard that a New- York preacher of 
 that name was coming to board at Mrs. Doane s. The 
 girl s home was not in New York. The preacher s fame 
 was too utterly removed from the sensational to be as yet 
 noisy (he had been out of the country for the past year) ; 
 and Miss Monny, moreover, had been brought up to 
 attend the Unitarian Church with one set of her relations, 
 and the Orthodox with another. She was an orphan, 
 having lost both parents by a peculiar fatality when she 
 was scarce a twelvemonth old. 
 
 Ere going out in the morning to-day, she had had a 
 mere passing introduction to the new boarder, and had 
 observed, with disapproval, that he was not an aged 
 man ; her ideal of the proper clergyman being a very old 
 man with white hair. Where the clergy were to stay 
 while their hairs were whitening was probably a question 
 that she had left unsettled : at all events, mademoiselle 
 decidedly regarded any man at all young as an imperti- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 9 
 
 nence in the ministerial office, and certainly as the most 
 unpleasant of beings in any sentimental attitude. 
 
 With this predisposition as to clergymen, she now 
 aeard the confidences which Mrs. Doaue commenced 
 slowly to impart, beginning by mentioning Mr. Leigh s 
 request to have breakfast served in his own room that 
 morning 
 
 44 Well, for a minister, and a son of Goliath, isn t he 
 a poor fussy worm of the dust?" idly commented M : ss 
 Monny, carrying to the fireplace the boots which she had 
 just taken off, and knocking their little heels together to 
 shake out the sand they had gathered. 
 
 44 1 think, dear," pursued the matron, opening further 
 a subject which would have been hard to introduce if the 
 girl had been of a less amiable disposition, 44 1 think he 
 didn t quite like the idea of your being here. He said 
 nothing direct, of course ; but I saw he wasn t pleased at 
 there being another boarder in the house." 
 
 The belle widened her brown eyes a little at this, her 
 first experience of being regarded as a nuisance by the 
 other sex, but stood in a silent attitude of waiting to hea^ 
 more. And Mrs. Doane went on : 
 
 44 The fact is, he s been to Cap n Gawthrop s to ask 
 about board there when your friends are gone. He 
 didn t really engage himself, but made inquiries, as if he 
 might be going to move, maybe. You see, Susannah had 
 just gone over there to take Mis Gawthrop that receipt 
 for tomato-soup that she wanted of me, and heard, un 
 beknown (the kitchen-door being open), every word ho 
 said ; and twas, that, if he came, he d pay them to take 
 no boarders but himself. I thought he was going to be 
 such a splendid boarder to suit," sighed the matron : 4t be 
 stepped right into the house so hearty and at home when 
 he first oame." 
 
fO A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 " Very much at home indeed, I should say," satirically 
 replied Miss Monny, "to be wanting a whole house to 
 himself when he only lives in two rooms of it, and or 
 deriug breakfasts up and down as if he were in a hotel," 
 said the maiden, seating herself emphatically on the side 
 of the bed, her long regard for the widow making her 
 quite personally indignant at the particularly able-bodied 
 boarder who thus inconvenienced her. 
 
 44 Perhaps he won t go away, after all. I don t believe 
 he will," presently added the girl, seeing the matron s 
 anxious face. * When he has taken a second look at 
 the Gawthrops, he ll see that it s a thousand times nicer 
 here ; and he ll stay for his own selfish sake, since that s 
 all he thinks of," pronounced Miss Rivers. "So I 
 wouldn t worry, aunt Persy," she said with affectionate 
 cheeriness, calling the widow by the name she had used 
 in childhood, Mrs. Doane s baptismal appellation being 
 the scriptural name of Persis. " And if he is so unprinci 
 pled as to go," continued the young lady, tugging vainly 
 at a velvet ribbon that was knotted round her full throat, 
 and pausing in her words a moment to seek a pair of 
 scissors, "if he does break his engagements that way, 
 and he a minister," resumed Miss Monny, having chopped 
 herself out of her necklace, and made a nip or two in the 
 air with her scissors, as if at the derelict divine, " why 
 I ll pay more form?/ board," simply concluded the girl, 
 seating herself again on the edge of the bed. " I have 
 two rooms, you know, this summer ; and it s fair I should 
 pay more, if he leaves on my account." 
 
 "No, Miss Monny," said the matron decisively. 
 " You ve done nothing awares to be in the way, but 
 always kindness to me and mine ; and you pay me now 
 all that I should feel it right to charge any young lady 
 for country board. I ve no use for the rooms, seeing, 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 11 
 
 from one cause and another, none of the children are 
 coming home this year with their families ; which was 
 why it seemed just the providential time for me to take 
 this minister, and so make a little money to help keep 
 things along. And he agreed perfectly obliging to have 
 dinner between one and two o clock, which I was afraid 
 he wouldn t be willing to give up the New -York fashion 
 of dinner at night, and supper turned about into luncheon 
 li the middle of the day," rambled on the housekeeper; 
 i% which was a great relief to me, as dinner is a meal that 
 J want to have the freshness of the day to get up in. 
 No, there was nothing else in the world he was difficult 
 about," murmured the matron, musing on the one strange 
 exception to the new-comer s amiability. "And it seems 
 he is a very famous man in New York," she added more 
 aloud to the girl. " Mis Gawthrop s son s wife s cousin 
 was to New York visiting a little over a year ago ; and 
 her friends, taking her round to see the lions, took her 
 once to hear Mr. Leigh preach, she said ; but they were 
 too late to get in. The church was crammed and over- 
 flowin ; and she said twas always so, and that all the 
 ladies in New York were after him." 
 
 Monny received this last announcement with a little 
 shriek of merriment. "The idea of anybody s being 
 after thar enormous ! Any woman who wasn t a horrid 
 giraffe would have to stand vp on stilts to marry him. 
 Or she might have a strap put through his arm to reach 
 up and hold on by, the way they do in the horse-cars," 
 said the girl, t^ isting her pocket-handkerchief into a loop 
 with a peculiarity she had of losing herself for the 
 moment in an} passing fancy. " Graceful, to come down 
 the aisle leaning on your bridegroom this way," she 
 said r suggesting, with a single upward thrust of her white 
 arm, the tableau of an average woman clutching at the 
 noosed elbow of a Titan about fifteen feet high. 
 
12 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 4 Law, how you do make pictures out of the air!" 
 exclaimed Mrs. Doane, impressed, even in her present 
 pre-occupation, with the dramatic power of the girl. 
 
 " Why hasn t he a wife?" asked Monny severely, 
 dropping the presentation of Mr. Leigh s wedding-grcup, 
 and sitting up against the tall, old-fashioned bed-post, to 
 consider his case in its actuality. "Of course he stays 
 unmarried on purpose to have all the ladies after him, and 
 so get up a great name for popularity, and have his church 
 crammed. It isn t likely that there is any thing particular 
 in his brains. He s too big. I ve read somewhere that 
 the most talented men are generally small." 
 
 "As to that," rejoined the widow, u the Lord has put 
 the remarkable souls of this world into all sorts of bodies, 
 first and last, as if to show us that none of his human 
 temples are to be despised. Great men have been hand 
 some, and they ve been homely ; they ve been small, and 
 sickly, and nothing to look at ; and they ve been strong, 
 and fine, and grand to look at, as this minister is, certain," 
 broke off Mrs. Doane. "And, considering how women 
 will run after any tolerable kind of a minister," she went 
 on, but neglected to finish audibly her sentence, being lost 
 in meditation over that violence of feminine onslaught 
 which this very superior specimen of a minister had doubt 
 less suffered, that he had come to flee appalled at the bare 
 sight of a young lady. For Mrs. Doane s secret convic 
 tion was a very firm one as to what was the minister s 
 real objection to her house. 
 
 The fair objection, meanwhile, was so little aware of 
 where her objectionable character came in, that she stiJ 
 fancied the difficult New- York clergyman merely wanted 
 to steep himself in some supernal quiet which he feared 
 she or her visitors might disturb. So her mind was quite 
 free to consider philosophically that mysterious infatuation 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 13 
 
 of her sex for ministers, suggested by Mrs. Doane s un 
 finished remark ; and, striving charitably to construe a 
 mania so unshared by herself, she said, 
 
 "It s all because a minister is a kind of general person 
 to tell troubles to. Women are full of troubles that they 
 want to pour out, and have some man say, I m sorrv, 
 and you ll be appreciated in heaven/ Lucy Snowc wasn t 
 silly, and she hadn t committed any crimes ; and in the 
 long vacation she went and confessed to a Romish priest 
 in his box. She wasn t a Catholic, and she wasn t in love 
 with the priest, - -she wanted to pour out." 
 
 " Lucy Snowe? A friend of yours did such a thing us 
 that ? inquired in rather a scandalized voice the Puritan 
 matron. 
 
 44 Lucy Snowe in Charlotte Bronte s novel, you know," 
 explained Monny ; " and she was a very serious character 
 indeed." 
 
 "Well, howsoever they may fix it up in novels," re 
 joined Mrs. Doane decidedly, "I don t believe all the 
 live women who run after ministers are very serious char 
 acters, and I guess some of their troubles would keep. 
 Ii a great city like New York, now, I reckon there s a 
 gathering of idle, romantic ladies after a famous preacher, 
 much as there is after a play-actor, or a forrin prince that 
 comes visiting. Only they throw bouquets to one kind of 
 star, and go to see the other about their souls ; and since 
 a minister can t well ask a lady whether it s heaven she a 
 seeking, or only to flirt with heaven s ambassador, I think 
 a truly high-minded one must feel sometimes as if his busi 
 ness was considerable mixed." 
 
 "H m!" said Monny. "Isn t everybody s business 
 mixed in this world? And a minister shouldn t preach 
 that there s a way to get through all your snarls pious 
 and patient and .proper, if he can t get through his OWD 
 
 80." 
 
14 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 11 Well," answered the matron meditatively, "it looks 
 as if this minister had made up his mind that the only 
 way to avoid snarls with ladies was to keep as far away 
 from the whole race of em as possible." 
 
 Monny, who, weary with the junketings of the day, had 
 gone idly on with this conversation as she loitered through 
 the process of preparing for her slumbers, here started 
 with that sudden flash and widening of her brown eyes 
 which denoted a discovery. "Oh! you mean that he 
 fancies I / will be laying snares for his attentions?" 
 cried the astonished belle ; and the idea was so complete 
 ly ludicrous to her she laughed herself out of breath. 
 
 She sobered presently, however, with a rising of maiden 
 resentment, as she said, "The first man in this world 
 who ever insulted me with having such thoughts." 
 
 "Now, my child, you see this stranger knows nothing 
 about you, except that you are a young lady with a face 
 of your own ; and as he hasn t studied the difference 
 between you and a regular flirt, and he can t help seeing 
 the string of beaux that are after you 
 
 "Now, Mrs. Persis, you know I never asked them to 
 come here, no, nor wanted them. I ve had all the 
 riding and hops and nonsense I wished for this summer ; 
 and so I came away from aunt Helen and the fashionable 
 places, down here, on purpose to stay alone, alone, alone 
 with you in this dear old house, that is the only place I 
 have to go to in the world where I can get serious enough 
 to work with all my might at what I want to." 
 
 "Yes, dear, I know; and if this minister could have 
 the least idea of what kind of girl you really are but 
 he couldn t imagine it: I believe no man would ever 
 imagine it," murmured the elder woman, speaking with 
 the emphasis of some thought in her mind as she gazed 
 at the beautiful young face before her. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 15 
 
 The owner of that face was not listening just then: she 
 was trying to realize that it was seriously possible for thia 
 preposterous minister to leave Mrs. Doane s house on her 
 account, and wondering what she could do about it, with 
 so concerned a lork on her speaking face, the widow 
 said, 
 
 " Really, my child, I don t know how I came to let 
 this all out to you. But, now I ve said it, what was in 
 my head was, that maybe, if you kept out of his way 
 n little for a day or two you re always open-minded, 
 dear, to understand things just as they re meant : so you 
 won t take offence at my asking you, for instance, to 
 have your breakfast to-morrow morning by yourself. You 
 see, then, if he should ask again to have breakfast in his 
 own room, I could mention that twas served down stairs 
 for him alone. I don t mind any thing about the work, 
 only I can t get things hot way up in the west chamber; 
 and I know gentlemen do like to have their meals hot." 
 
 " He may burn himself up with his meals, for all me ! " 
 declared Mouny indignantly. "And I will have my 
 breakfast anywhere and any time that will be easiest for 
 you, aunt Persy," she added with immediate good nature 
 towards the blameless woman who had this intolerable 
 boa/der to manage. 
 
 " Thank 3-011, dear," said Mrs. Doane, taking up her 
 caudle. "I thought, maybe, if he was suited fora day 
 or two, he might settle to stay after all, as he didn t posi 
 tively engage to go to Cap n Gawthrop s. I wouldn t 
 wish to remember my own profit before my neighbor s, 
 only so far as I may have some claim, having laid out 
 monej in expectation of his being here." 
 
 " How much do kitchen ranges cost?" suddenly asked 
 the young lady, remembering that Mrs. Doane had im 
 ported such an article in the past week, because of the 
 
16 A EEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 com ng gentleman boarder. The new apparatus which 
 thus graced the kitchen on Mr. Leigh s account had been 
 an outlay which quite alarmed the widow now to think 
 of ; but she would not accept advances of money from 
 the impulsive girl on this bill. So she replied, in general 
 terms, that she had long wanted the range, as her old 
 stove was small and worn out, and that Mr. Leigh set 
 his own price, when he wrote to her, for his board, at so 
 great a figure, she felt she must have the best conven 
 iences for preparing meals. He paid more money than 
 anybody could have thought of asking for board in a 
 plain old house like hers. 
 
 "Money doesn t pay for bad manners; and he has 
 the worst manners I ever heard of," pronounced Mouny, 
 thumping her pretty head into her pillow with the energy 
 of her condemnation. 
 
 But, when Mrs. Doane was gone, she began to consider 
 very seriously whether any thing could be done to make this 
 abominably mannered but pecuniarily profitable boarder 
 stay where he was due. For the girl was quite unselfish 
 enough to put her own inclinations out of the case in 
 regard for the widow, whose thrifty struggles to keep the 
 old place so dear to her as an independent little home 
 for herself and a summer retreat for her children, whose 
 means were all very moderate Monny was well ac 
 quainted with. 
 
 She pondered, whether one could reason with the 
 renegade minister, of righteousness, and a judgment to 
 come for those who devoured widows houses, letting 
 them buy kitchen-ranges in vain ; whether to send him 
 a certificate in writing that she would stay in he. own 
 rooms, and not cross his sabred vision for the season 
 (these steps seemed hardly feasible) ; whether to go away 
 herself. That, too, would be a loss to Mrs. Doane; 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 17 
 
 besides, frhe had made a very especial effort to come and 
 spend the rest of the summer just where she was. The 
 case was involved. A masculine boarder who was going 
 to leave a house for fear a young lady there would lind 
 him too agreeable ; the young lad} T really finding him as 
 intolerable as he could possibly desire, yet forced to wish 
 for his stay, lest a widow should be defrauded ; the young 
 lady prevented by the conventions of society from inform 
 ing him of her sentiments, viz., that personally she so 
 desired his departure, he would be profoundly safe to stay, 
 and she would hate him to his heart s content, if he would 
 only remain for the landlady s good. 
 
 Opening and shutting her sleepy eyes on this remarkable 
 muddle of conditions in a vain effort to see through it 
 some clear line of action, Miss Rivers went at last to 
 the land of dreams, leaving the minister undisposed of. 
 
18 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 THE Rev. Kenyon Leigh fell so far short of the 
 wickedness expected of him as to make no second 
 demand for a private breakfast ; but wholly unaware of 
 the excitement caused by his first one, and his discovered 
 call at Capt. Gawthrop s, he descended innocently next 
 morning to seat himself wherever Mrs. Doane s usual 
 breakfast-table might be spread, and with whomsoever 
 might be wont to gather round it. Only the widow 
 gathered there, no other mortal appearing save Susannah 
 to wait on the table. 
 
 Peacefully alone with his landlady then, the minister 
 partook the morning meal, going out directly thereafter 
 for a ramble down the lane and a short walk on the 
 beach. It is doubtful if the young lady boarder was at 
 all in his absorbed mind this morning, save as some un 
 conscious touch of satisfaction may have been there that 
 her languidly fashionable habits apparently prevented 
 her from getting up to breakfast, as her pleasure- roving 
 habits did from ever appearing at the regular hour for 
 any of her other meals. The absorbed mind was turning 
 back to long intermitted tasks ; for, instead of being at 
 the beginning of his vacation this midsummer morning, the 
 minister considered himself rather at its end. So far from 
 having come to this retreat to rest, he had come there 
 with peculiarly vigorous intentions of work. 
 
 He had been a minister never before given to long 
 vacations ; but he had been silent, and absent from his 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 19 
 
 pulpit, now, for nearly a year past, journeying in Europe 
 and in the East, from which tnuels he had landed in 
 New York only a few days back. He had intended, 
 indeed, to remain abroad yet two or three months longer, 
 but had returned home thus in advance of the time set 
 for him to occupy again his city pulpit, because his 
 foreign *jip had not brought him the restoration which 
 he had hoped to find in it. The ma ^dy which had sent 
 him abroad to try the cure of a complete change was 
 no physical one, only a secret sense which had come to 
 him, even while his popularity was brilliantly on the 
 increase, of the failure of his first enthusiasm in his 
 work. 
 
 The first enthusiasm in all work, in mere aims of living, 
 is fed more or less by illusion ; and whether there will be 
 power to go on with the work, with the high purposes, 
 when the illusion begins to vanish, is one of the great 
 tests of a life. One sees many men go down at this 
 point ; apparently established lives make intellectual or 
 moral decline, or both, when age is yet very far from 
 touching the faculties, and when, if it be a moral falling- 
 off, it would seem that the mere strength of previously 
 correct habits should have insured them : it is experience 
 that has withered the young dream under which their 
 good foi ces triumphed. 
 
 Kenyon Leigh s work happened to be preaching ; and, 
 however little the clerical mark was on him to the eye, 
 he had attained to a breadth of success in the pulpit 
 which proved that he was pre-eminently born for his call 
 ing. Whenever and wherever he spoke, the Puritans 
 flocked to hear him, though he preached in a gown ; and 
 the radicals, though he preached the strait gospel. This 
 singular light which had always been in his interpretations 
 to the most widely different classes of minds burned yet 
 
20 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 in his own soul : his present depression did not arise from 
 what could properly be called a failure of religious faith. 
 No : while he was eminently a thinker himself, and given 
 to constant and candid study of the scientific and critical 
 thought of the day, some insight of a poetic soul had so 
 enabled him to pierce to the eternal heart of truth in the 
 Christian creed, that he could preach still, as an honest 
 man, the old religior . 
 
 Nevertheless, there were problems in his profession 
 which weighed on him in proportion to the breadth of 
 the man ; and he had reached now, as we have implied, 
 that critical period in life, which, as to mere years, may 
 come earlier or later than it had done to Kenyon Leigh, 
 when, with every faculty ripe for the best action, energy 
 is paralyzed by a loss of the early sanguine belief in the 
 results of action. He did not regret his choice of a life- 
 work : he only wanted to get a new start in it, that 
 courage of the actual, faith to go on working with all 
 one s might in the knowledge of things just as they really 
 are. It had seemed to him that he might best win this 
 new courage by a complete dropping and forgetting, for 
 a time, of all his labors : for this prime end he went to 
 Europe. He had spent several years of his student life 
 in a foreign university : for this and other reasons the 
 Old World was peculiarly attractive to him, and he had 
 ceitainly enjoyed his trip. 
 
 Still the chief hope in which it had been undertaken 
 was not fulfilled : that precious inward spring of the 
 early enthusiasm in his work did not rise again. On 
 the contrary, the longer he staid abroad at this time, 
 the longer he wanted to stay. Discovering this fact in 
 himself, he faced suddenly about with characteristic reso 
 lution, and came home, to seek out for a time such a 
 seclusion as this of Cape Cod, and see if he could lay 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 21 
 
 hold of the primal forces there by buckling straight down 
 to the writing of new sermons. 
 
 Now, in one direction the weary minister had not had 
 a vacation: respite from adoring women had been denied 
 him. They had gone out with him on the English steamer, 
 and come home with him on the French one ; and it was 
 astonishing by what conjunctions they had crossed his 
 track all over Europe, and even in Palestine and among 
 the Pyramids. He could swear, as did Sir Launcelot, 
 " by truth and knighthood," that lie " gave no cause, not 
 willingly, for such a love/ being a man who never, in 
 any profession, would have gone sprinkling thin and wide 
 the vapory shower of his affections, as doth the ladies 
 man ; and clerical philandering was forever impossible to 
 him. 
 
 Lest it should be imagined, however, that this hero is 
 intended to add his note to the prolonged ululations of 
 these latter days over the ministerial perils, it may be 
 necessary solemnly to state the fact, that, in all his 
 adored existence, he had never found any thing worse 
 than weakness, the very innocentest silliness, in the ladies 
 who thus hunted him. 
 
 But just now he was quite abnormally sensitive to all 
 the pains of life, adoring women especially ; and when, 
 into tuai solitary cave by the sea which he fancied he 
 had secured out of reach of all such, there marched at 
 the first breath that particularly twinkling damsel, why, 
 he felt the longed-for peace of that widow s house most 
 darkly threatened. For, so far as he had attained to an* 
 philosophy concerning this species of charmer, he con 
 eluded that the talent for enslaving men, when it existed 
 in this supreme perfection, exercised itself like an instinct 
 upon whatever subject came to hand. He did not wish 
 to be that subject at hand ; and, in short, he behaved in 
 
22 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 an hour of weakness as we have recorded. This morn 
 ing, however, his soul was stronger: he had descended 
 manfully, as we have seen, expecting to meet the enemy 
 at the family board. And now, although he had no 
 revelation of the ties between himself and Mrs. Doane s 
 new cojking-stove, yet, as a man really considerate of 
 widows expectant of boarders, he had, perhaps, begun to 
 fear that the bonus which he proposed to give on depart 
 ure might not solace the matron. Then, the apprehended 
 flirt having been thus far so mercifully taken up with 
 other men as not to be even visible in the house, which 
 without her was completely satisfactory to him, alto 
 gether, it is probable that his plan of removal was con 
 siderably in abeyance just now. Certainly, as he walked 
 down the lane, he was not on his way to Capt. Gaw- 
 throp s ; and he proposed returning, after a brief ramble, 
 to his rooms at Mrs. Doane s, for a long morning s 
 study. 
 
 Going swiftly down the lane now, and crossing some 
 intervening barrens, he came out upon the high bluff-like 
 bank of the ocean, far below which was the beach, con 
 veniently reached, however, by the hollows which at 
 various intervals intersected the undulating bank. Pres 
 ently descending the latter by one of these openings to 
 the lower promenade of the beach, he had scarcely reached 
 it, when he heard mingled with the sound of the retiring 
 waves (the tide was going out) other music, a girl s 
 laughter, a big dog s bark, and the racing feet of both. 
 Scamper they came, or rather, went ; for they were run 
 ning from Mr. Leigh when he first caught sight of them. 
 Facing about, however, at the farther goal, which was a 
 stake standing aslant in the sands, the maiden solemnly 
 eounted, "One, two, three!" catching back the dog, 
 o\er and over, as he showed a disposition to bound incon- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 23 
 
 tineutly away before the proper moment. Then, when 
 he manifested at last a due respect for figures, on they 
 came like the wind. 
 
 In this race, the dog being perhaps demoralized by hia 
 mathematical effort, the girl actually came out a pace 
 ahead, whereat she clasped her shaggy competitor round 
 the neck with such an exultant little cry, the looker-ou 
 could but laugh in sympathy with the triumph of hia 
 species. Miss Rivers, abashed to have been discovered 
 by anybody in her frisky gambols, straightened herself in 
 a breath, and beheld whom but that imposition of a 
 minister, as he strode into view from the overarching of 
 the huge sand-bank ! 
 
 That frank, cordial laugh of Mr. Leigh s might have 
 re-assured even a young woman ashamed of being caught 
 indulging the frolic glee of a child, if she had heard it 
 with an unprejudiced ear. But, as it was, this untimely 
 ecclesiastical mirth, " which any decent being would have 
 suppressed, coming upon people so unexpectedly," thought 
 the indignant racer, this merriment was received as a 
 fresh outrage by the much-outraged Miss Mouny. And 
 when the minister added to his " good- morning " the 
 interrogatory whether she was getting up an appetite for 
 breakfast, it was a little too much. 
 
 " I had my breakfast an hour and a half ago," tersely 
 replied Miss Rivers, remembering how she had eaten it on 
 a corner of the table-cloth, abject, and like a Pariah, to 
 have the board cleared for this New- York Brahmin. 
 
 " Indeed!" said the unconscious Brahmin, getting a 
 rather new view of the languid young lady who break 
 fasted at sunrise, and ran like Atalanta on the beach. 
 "Do you breakfast so early every morning?" 
 
 Atalanta was getting her courage up. Here was her 
 opportunity. Swallowing timidity, and helped by her 
 
24 A KEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 preciously small opinion of the stately Samson before 
 her, she said steadily, "I never breakfasted so early 
 before you came. I have something to say to you," she 
 added, indicating a suitable seat for the audience on a 
 pile of driftwood not far away. 
 
 The minister, rather surprised, nevertheless obeyed the 
 imperious little wave of the feminine hand, and bestowed 
 himself on the driftwood, waiting for young mistress Rivers 
 to go on ; and thus she went : 
 
 44 1 breakfast so early because you dislike young ladies, 
 and because the reasons which make all other women 
 like clergymen do not take effect on me." 
 
 The gentleman thus addressed looked blank for a 
 moment, and then he was too radically truthful a man 
 for some hint of that confusion which attends on being 
 4 found out" not to touch visibly his face. How on 
 earth he had been found out was a riddle to him ; but such 
 was his doom, and he met it by saying, a half smile 
 stealing involuntarily round his lips as he surveyed more 
 attentively the frolicsome sprite of a moment ago trans 
 formed into the grave young person who had seated herself 
 on a rock at the severest distance at all compatible with 
 conversation, "Pray, what are some of those universal 
 feminine reasons for liking clergymen which do not influ 
 ence you, since you feel obliged to put so politely your 
 side of the dislike?" 
 
 44 Well," returned the calm reasoner on the rock, " the 
 devotion of women to clergymen is, of course, not a 
 tribute to personal qualities at all ; because any one can 
 see that very inferior men, if they happen to be clergy 
 men, are still highly honored by women. It is a party 
 duty, and I do not have a very strong feeling of my party 
 duty?" 
 
 44 Party duty? " repeated Mr. Leigh, somewhat puzzled. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 25 
 
 44 Certainly. Women, you know, are not considered to 
 have mueh influence in this world, except a moral inilu- 
 ence, to be of much consequence, except to practise 
 virtues. So the man whose business it is to proclaim 
 the importance of virtues is the magnifier of their office ; 
 ho declares the dignity of their existence ; he may be 
 called the spokesman of their side. And to honor your 
 tpokesrnau, and set him before all other men, is no more 
 than what self-respect requires, I suppose," meditated 
 Miss Monuy, rather impressed with her own discovery 
 that there was really something to say for this minister- 
 adoring weakness of her sex. 
 
 44 And you confess yourself to be wanting in this grave 
 matter of self-respect? " returned the clergyman. 
 
 "Yes: I do not realize myself enough as a general 
 creature, as a piece of woman in the lump, to feel 
 bound up with what is called woman s cause in that way. 
 Though sometimes I do," subjoined the girl, again with 
 her naive air of half abstraction, as if she were settling 
 things with herself, as well as settling the clergyman. 
 But, recalling the latter business, she added, 
 
 "And as a conceited minister might imagine that it 
 was because he was personally more admirable than other 
 men that he received so much attention from women, and 
 as, in any case, there is an unpleasant effect in seeing so 
 many women devoted to one man, it is not an order of 
 things that I should wish to help on." 
 
 44 And how about the sight of so many men devoted to 
 one young woman?" rejoined Mr. Leigh, not particularly 
 given to this kind of bantering, but really not knowing 
 what else to say in this most extraordinary dialogue. 
 
 "That is the proper order," returned the belle with 
 dignity, and without the shadow of a smile. 
 
 Something in the girl s manner indefinably removing 
 
26 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 all her remarks from the daring of native impudence, 
 her listener still remained attentive on his log, awaiting 
 further communications. And the maiden who had this 
 unique task before her, of making a man perfectly at 
 ease by convincing him of his total unpleasantness, went 
 on with it as she might by saying, 
 
 "Mr. Leigh, as you disliked the idea of my being 
 here when you knew nothing about me but that 1 was a 
 young lady, and as I had my feeling about your being 
 here when I knew nothing about you but that you were 
 a clergyman, there is nothing personal in any thing that 
 is necessary to be said in order to come to an under 
 standing. It is a class that happens to be disliked on 
 both sides." 
 
 " Certainly it is a class," replied the minister, imitating 
 the girl s gravity of tone. "And I will therefore con 
 sider that there is no personality in whatever may still be 
 on your mind to say." 
 
 " What is on my mind to say," returned Miss Rivers, 
 " is that Mrs. Doane needs both her boarders, and that, if 
 you leave her house, I shall feel that I have done her a 
 harm. I would stay out of your way, if I could, at all 
 times ; but, as at meal-times it will not be possible for me 
 to do so much longer, I thought if you could understand 
 that I shall consider it perfectly fair for you to remain 
 here and take no notice of me as a class that you dis 
 like " said Monny, pausing a little to steady her voice, 
 for this manner of speech was too unwonted to her to be 
 maintained without some inward effort. 
 
 "I perceive," said Mr. Leigh, with his penetrating 
 glance reading the face of the girl who had succeeded in 
 adding a new variety to his extremely larg-e experience of 
 feminine interviews, "I perceive that you have a very 
 brave and unselfish regard for Mrs. Doane ; and I hereby 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 27 
 
 agree to continue to represent in her house the class that 
 you dislike," he said, with a humorous sparkle in his rye. 
 Then rising from his log, he bowed good-morning with 
 tne amused tolerance of a man taken to task by a child 
 (he had lost all impression of his fellow-boarder as a 
 young lady) , and went on his way. In a moment more 
 the sea and sky, and the gathering shape of a new sermon, 
 quite absorbed his thoughts, to the exclusion of all ladies, 
 young or old. Save, perhaps, as he looked out oil 
 the wide sweep of the Atlantic, there may have come 
 some passing thought of a certain lady on the other side 
 of it who would be coming home ere long, Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt, a widow of thirty-five, belonging to his own 
 church in New York. . He had had passing thoughts of 
 that lady for four years. 
 
 On the very first sabbath of his preaching as installed 
 rector of St. Ancient s, glancing over his new flock while 
 the choir chanted the opening anthem of the service, his 
 eyes fell on a most queenly lady, whose face, with its lumi 
 nous pale complexion, jet-black hair, long- fringed gray 
 eyes, and incomparably beautiful curves of lip and cheek 
 and chin, was indeed a face to stand out from all others, 
 and one which brought instantly into Kenyon Leigh s 
 mind the lines of Michael Angelo s sonnet to Vittoria 
 Colonna : 
 
 "If it be true that any beauteous thing 
 Raises the pure and just desire of man 
 From earth to God, the eternal Fount of all, 
 Such I believe my love " 
 
 This " beauteous thing, * whose type of loveliness 
 stirred emotions which rose so accordant with the chants 
 of the temple, was, in reality, one of the very worldliest of 
 mortals. But the minister had never discovered this in 
 all his after-kaowledge of Mrs. Van Cortlandt . he Ind 
 
28 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 found many things in her, on personal acquaintance, which 
 distinctly pleased him, besides her peerless face. If her 
 elegant manners, for instance, were somewhat cold, a 
 touch of the frosty Caucasus was not without its charm to 
 a man who had had rather too abundant experience of 
 feminine gushing. 
 
 Nevertheless, after four years time, Mr. Leigh had still 
 only passing thoughts of Mrs. Van Cortlandt ; for, finally, 
 he had only pleased his taste. But she had gone on 
 pleasing his taste now for four years, and he had never 
 been in love in his life. All the ordinary triflings with 
 sentiment, his profession and his peculiarly flattered posi 
 tion in it had utterly deterred him from and given him a 
 distaste for ; and a serious passion had never befallen 
 him. So that, without belonging by nature among those 
 defective beings more or less defective, and below the 
 highest type of humanity, however wide a name some of 
 them may have left on the earth whose sympathies flow 
 warmly only in some universal channels, whose affections 
 are all satisfied with the diffusive benevolence of a philan 
 thropy, a reform, a religious mission, without being 
 originally one of these men to whom marriage is intrinsi 
 cally a mistake and a burden, Kenyon Leigh had yet 
 grown into such a relation to his work, that it had been 
 quite possible that he might come among these characters 
 at last. Just now, however, it was more possible, it was 
 even highly probable, that he would do far worse. The 
 woman to whom he stood uncommitted as yet by word or 
 deed, or even look, was, nevertheless, subtly and steadily 
 drawing him in. 
 
 Thackeray makes an assertion somewhere in one of his 
 famous i.ovels, to the effect that any woman who has not 
 a positive hump can marry any man, let her have oppor 
 tunity enough to meet him, and devote herself to her end 
 
A REVEKEND IDOL. 29 
 
 with sufficient strategy and determination. With no 
 humps, and with infinite opportunity, strategy, and re 
 solve, the beautiful Mrs. Van Cortlandt had pursued the 
 famous preacher as a husband (by no means in that crowd 
 of poor simple ladies who pursued him openly) for the 
 last four years. And this likely-to-be-successful pursuer 
 was the one woman in all the train who was so far from 
 truly loving Kcnyon Leigh that she did not even believe 
 in him. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt had brought out of her former 
 married experience it had been an experience of ten 
 years, long enough to frame comprehensive theories in 
 a thorough disbelief in all men. And not only her minis 
 ter made no exception to her general unfaith in his sex, 
 but she disbelieved in him even more than in the average 
 of men. Not that she in the least suspected the Kev. 
 Kcnyon Leigh of hypocrisy, of leading, or of ever hav 
 ing led, any life but that which he seemed to lead. Just 
 the life which he really led, precisely the man that he was 
 and seemed to be, had irritated, nay, angered her, scores 
 of times. Mrs. Van Cortlandt s disbelief in men was a 
 disbelief in them as husbands. She held a fixed creed 
 that all men were too supremely absorbed in something 
 elde ever to be absorbed in a wife beyond some briefest 
 little time of courtship and early marriage. Her first 
 husband had been absorbed in her for just that short 
 space, and no more. Then had appeared the fundamental 
 masculine nature, a nature whose interests, comforts, 
 pleasures, were all in things which women cared little or 
 nothing about, a surprisingly alien, fickle, selfish, un 
 satisfactory genus. 
 
 Mr. Van Cortlandt had, in truth, been very much in 
 love with his wife when he married her, thinking her 
 beauty divine, as indeed it was. Her beauty had ncvei 
 
30 A Pv EVER END IDOL. 
 
 faded, but his affection undeniably had. She had not 
 poisoned him : he had had the best medica. care in his 
 last illness, which was malarial fever, of which he had 
 died at Rome, a perfectly natural death, about a year 
 before Mrs. Van Cortlandt first beheld the famous new 
 rector of St. Ancient s. 
 
 A being who has lost capacity to live by the heart and 
 its simple joys may be ail the more prone to live by the 
 fancy and its most fantastic caprice ; and the widow took 
 so strong a caprice for this invulnerable minister as to 
 set up an establishment in New York, to the abandonment 
 of all her previous plans for existence. These had been, 
 to make her permanent residence abroad, where she had 
 brilliant social introductions, and where, with her unworn 
 beauty and the large wealth left her by her incompatible 
 first husband, she wi*3 quite in a position to marry a title. 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt was a denationalized American whom 
 it would scarcely be correct to speak of as aping the 
 style of the European nobility, so perfectly had she 
 assimilated, as the natural food of her pride, whatever 
 was external in the tastes and habits of the titled circles 
 that she had long moved in abroad. But being learned 
 in life now, life with husbands, she decided, for a 
 strange jumble of reasons, to marry Kenyon Leigh before 
 any other man in the two hemispheress and for a man of 
 the Western Hemisphere, she reasoned, his ancestry on 
 both sides was as nearly noble as possible. The man 
 himself took the proud woman s fancy as a kind of mon 
 arch : what she herself would have styled a true imperial 
 sway, she saw that he exercised over most men who came 
 in contact with him. 
 
 It was true, indeed, that Kenyon Leigh had a great 
 personal power, a power, too, which was quite separable 
 from his moral excellence, or even his intellectual gifts. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 31 
 
 For he gave some impression as of an instinctive un ler- 
 standing of all human experience, joined with a certain 
 invincible calm which is the mood of the highest courage ; 
 and such men, whether they be good or bad, seem always 
 to draw human beings to themselves as with a kind of 
 enchanter s spell. There is something, perhaps, in the 
 calm of these wide-seeing natures, which acts re-assuringly 
 on the general human heart. One feels that they have 
 looked on all the terror of existence, and yet live ; and 
 mortals follow them as if to learn their secret ; and this 
 when the Olympic tranquillity which so fascinates may be 
 that of fatalism rather than of faith, and their intuitive 
 knowledge of all that mortal spirits bear, not of the true 
 strain of sympathy. Thus one or two of the great con 
 querors of the world men pitiless in their ambitions, 
 and largely material in their aims appear certainly to 
 have had some form of this strange personal power. 
 They compelled all creatures to their will, not so much by 
 outward violence as by a mysterious inward force, a 
 something which invincibly attached men to their for 
 tunes ; and this by a bond which was not one of interest, 
 nor yet of what we ordinarily call love or fear. The old 
 stories always current of the invulnerability of these 
 heroes, that they bore charmed lives which bullets could 
 not touch seem to point to this same impression which 
 uiey diffused, of being masters of fate itself ; and all 
 weaker spirits gathered to them perforce, as if to share 
 in* that great conquering. 
 
 .Never was a more unconscious possessor of this per 
 sonal power than Kenyon Leigh : we should say a more 
 unwilling possessor of it, if he had been at all aware of 
 the gift. He was no demigod of war, seeking to draw 
 the strength of a million men to strike through his single 
 arm : he was a preacher who wanted people to see the 
 
32 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 truth, and not himself. For, of all kinds of hero-worship^ 
 that most abhorrent to him to be the object of was min 
 ister-worship. The absolutely delicate and generous spirit 
 has always an especial sense of confusion in receiving 
 adulation for any thing in the line of what can be called 
 moral services. The truly benevolent man does not like 
 to be praised for his charitable gifts ; still less the truly 
 religious man, for his piety or pious eloquence. Thus in 
 his private intercourse this minister would sometimes turn 
 on an indiscreet flatterer such an icily cold shoulder as 
 only outraged shyness can do. He had the sensitive per 
 sonal reserve which belongs to most fine natures, and 
 this, joined with an intense manliness, made something 
 extreme in his recoil from that position of a pet which 
 there is some disposition to place an admired minister in. 
 And Mrs. Van Cortlandt saw this most simple-hearted of 
 men as a personage who sat solitary on a throne, at once 
 attracting general worship, and profoundly scorning the 
 worshippers. It was her very beau ideal of a superior 
 being. 
 
 If Mr. Leigh s independence of all men took her fancy, 
 still more did his even greater independence of all women. 
 It is not necessary for us to look closely into any such 
 line of questions as whether Mr. Van Cortlandt (this gen 
 tleman had inherited his wealth, and had spent most of 
 his married life in European capitals and in very elegant 
 leisure) had amused himself unlawfully with other fair 
 female society when his wife s had quite ceased to amuse 
 him. It is sufficient for our tale to note that it was in 
 the nature of Mrs. Van Cortlandt, and in all her modes 
 of belief, to be intensely jealous of the man over whose 
 heart she had lost power, whether he gave her this cause 
 or not. So it was a matter of great account with her, that, 
 in marrying Mr. Leigh, she would be forever guaranteed 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 33 
 
 from rivals in other women, both by his profession and his 
 extreme non-susceptibility to feminine attractions. This 
 latter trait in the man she recognized well, and that his 
 total eacupe from all entanglements in the flatteries of 
 women was due quite as much to his idiosyncrasies as to 
 his prudence. 
 
 The widow had studied all his idiosyncrasies for years, 
 and she believed that she knew Kenyon Leigh by heart : 
 in fact, she knew him every way but by heart. It is only 
 some outward husk and rind of the truth that the keenest 
 unsympathetic search into a human soul ever attains to. 
 
 The lady over the water was not in the minister s 
 thoughts, as we have said, this morning, save for a pass 
 ing moment as he looked over the sea, because those 
 thoughts were engrossed with a new sermon. He woke 
 out of it for a moment, however, as springing up the high 
 bank again, after a half-mile or more on the beach to 
 return to his lodgings by another way than that he had 
 come, he recognized Capt. Gawthrop. This retired salt, 
 living in a good-sized house, being somewhat impecuni 
 ous, a great gossip, and knowing the Cape withal from 
 end to end, was extremely fond of taking metropolitan 
 boarders, and was naturally hoping this morning to secure 
 the new arrival from New York, who had made those 
 inquiries at his house the night before. But this hope 
 was doomed to disappointment ; for Mr. Leigh walked up 
 to him with the announcement that he should remaia 
 Jirough the season at Mrs. Doane s. 
 
34 A REVEBEND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 
 u r I ^HAT minister is going to stay. I ve bad a, talk 
 
 -L with him down on the beach, and it s settled, 
 cried Monny, who with her companion, Duke George, 
 an immense Newfoundland dog of a breed brought home 
 long years before by Capt. Doane, had rushed directly 
 for Mrs. Doane s house, after her rencounter with Mr. 
 Leigh, to relieve the anxiety there with this announcement. 
 
 " Bless you, child ! " said the pleased widow, who was 
 found in the young lady s own chamber, bestowing fresh 
 towels on the rack. " I knew he would like you as soon 
 as he got the least acquainted with you." 
 
 "Like me! He has the worst opinion of me, and 1 
 have the worst opinion of him, the very worst ; and 
 that s the contract," declared the maiden, bringing down 
 her pink palm on the pate of Duke George, who having 
 placed himself upright on his haunches, close to her chair, 
 held his nose aloft with the air of a witness ready to 
 testify to all points. 
 
 " You needn t worry, aunt Persy, thinking he was 
 dissatisfied with the house, or with you, not a bit. 1 
 was really the whole trouble: I saw it the moment I 
 accused him. And of all the spoilt, spoilt peacocks, even 
 among popular ministers, he must be the crown," cried 
 the belle, emphasizing this time on Duke George s crown 
 with a fervor which she atoned for by sundry softer pats 
 and pulling of the ears, which caresses he laid his head in 
 her lap the more deeply to enjoy. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 35 
 
 "Why, what ever have you accused him of, child?" 
 asked Mrs. Doane, aghast. "Truly, my dear, although 
 he has been rather strange about this, I do think lie is 
 a very uncommon, grand kind of a man, I mean a good 
 one, as well as a famous." 
 
 Miss Rivers, who had not the least respect at present for 
 the New- York minister s fame, and who had very decided 
 views as to his goodness, here made a sudden move, out 
 of the chair into which she had dropped, to the next 
 room, calling the widow, as if to show her something 
 there. For naturally she did not wish the latter to know 
 what argument she had made with the clerical boarder for 
 her sake. Mrs. Doane, believing from the girl s habitual 
 politeness that she could have said nothing amiss to Mr. 
 Leigh, accordingly put away her surplus towels, and, 
 dropping the ministerial question, followed Miss Rivers 
 into the east chamber, as the square front room on this 
 side of the house was especially called. There was no 
 bed in this apartment at present ; but paintings in oil and 
 water-colors, and drawings in every thing, in all stages 
 of completion, figures rather than landscapes, filled the 
 room. 
 
 " It s a born miracle, like all your pictures ! " exclaimed 
 the widow, surveying the canvas on the easel, to which 
 Monny h.id called her attention merely to divert it from 
 closer inquiry into her conversation with Mr. Leigh. 
 u How long are you going on, dear, doing these wonder 
 ful things, and letting nobody know but your aunt and 
 uncle, and forbidding even them to show your pictures 
 to anybody?" said Mrs. Doane. 
 
 "Till I get a little surer that I am truly fit to paint 
 pictures," replied the girl. 
 
 "As if the Lord didn t make you fit to paint pictures 
 when you came into the world ! for I ve always heard 
 
36 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Mary Ann tell of your drawing pictures all over the walls, 
 and everywhere, before you could talk plain ; and now, 
 when with half a dozen strokes you can make the per- 
 fectest likeness of any face you see ! " 
 
 u O aunt Persis ! that isn t painting true pictures at all. 
 I can make a likeness of a wooden kind, without thinking 
 a thought. That comes natural to me. I could always 
 do that. Besides, old Monsieur Durocher that I ve told 
 you of, who was so poor and discouraged that he came 
 to be drawing-master in my boarding-school, he was a 
 thoroughly trained French artist ; and he taught me like 
 a faithful, furious angel two whole years. It was he, I 
 suppose, who first got me in the way of hiding my work 
 so ; that is, he kept me always doing hard studies, never 
 letting me finish any thing like a picture fit to show. He 
 said I would be praised too soon, and spoilt. 
 
 " You see, he beat into me, when I was very young, all 
 his own ideas about art, which were very high and true 
 ones ; and he used to scare me so with scoldings, and 
 praise me so beautifully in streaks, I could not help 
 learning true drawing and color, just like a man. Yes, 
 he said that he taught me as thoroughly as if I was a 
 man, and that it was a thousand shames that I wasn t 
 one. You see, even he seemed to think it the most unac 
 countable strange mixture that I should be a girl, just 
 like other girls, and yet serious in trying to paint pic 
 tures. But, if it is my nature to be so mixed, how am I 
 going to get away from my nature? asked Monny, 
 looking up with a childlike appeal to this old woman, 
 with whom she talked much in her mere young need of 
 utterance. 
 
 "Seeing, child, that it has pleased Heaven to mix 
 your nature of very uncommon gifts, I should say twas 
 one to be very thankful for. And your pictures would 
 
A KEVEREND IDOL. 37 
 
 certain be taken the greatest notice of in these days, 
 when there s so much said about women s talents and 
 their rights." 
 
 44 Why, that s just my worst trouble," quickly replied 
 the girl, "all that I read about woman s sphere, etc. 
 You see, to tell the truth, I have painted so many years 
 now, I have really been thinking lately, especially this 
 summer, that I would finish up two or three of my pictures 
 that I am the least dissatisfied with, and send them some 
 where to be exhibited, without my real name, you know. 
 And when I began to think about this, I began to read 
 every thing I saw on what is called the 4 Woman Ques 
 tion. I had never noticed such articles much before; 
 for they did not look very interesting, and I thought they 
 were all about women s voting, and I ve never wanted 
 to vote, or about their being lawyers and doctors and 
 ministers ; which I m sure I don t want to be. But I 
 read all women s-rights articles, whether for or against, 
 very carefully indeed now ; and the whole subject grows 
 a great trouble to me," said the maiden pensively. " For 
 men that I can see are truly able men, who have studied 
 and thought a great deal, and who seem to wish the world 
 to go right, and not wrong, yet say things about women 
 ard their place which discourage me dreadfully about 
 painting pictures. 
 
 41 You know, aunt Persy," Monny went on, laying 
 down her palette-knife, 4 in order to do your best at any 
 thing, you want to feel, first, that the work is worthy to 
 be done ; and, second, that it is a worthy, a right thing 
 in yourself to try to do it. Now, that last point is where 
 I get no assurance from literature ; and literature is the 
 only means I have by which to find out what the serious 
 minds of the world, the minds that I should wish to be 
 approved of, think about things. So far as I can make 
 
88 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 out their sentiments, it appears that most of them would 
 not believe in women s painting pictures at all ; that is, 
 they lay down such and such qualities as the proper 
 feminine nature, which, they say, are not the qualities 
 to make good artists, poets, etc. So you see, a woman 
 is placed in this dreadful strait, that, if by any chance she 
 should do what was confessed to be a really good work 
 of art, her very success would imply that she was some 
 how out of the proper feminine nature. That is. your 
 picture must be poor, because you are a woman ; or you 
 are a very poor kind of woman, if it is good." 
 
 " Bless you, child ! " said the matron, surveying in her 
 manifold feminine charm the maiden who thus summed 
 up her "dreadful strait," "nobody would ever think 
 of calling you a poor kind of a woman. And seeing you 
 care so much, as is right you should do, for the opinions 
 of serious minds, if you would only let me show your 
 pictures to this famous minister " 
 
 "Mercy! I don t mean minister seriousness," cried 
 Momiy. " I mean the men who write the solid reviews 
 and essays, the men who have deep knowledge about 
 this world, and what is right and true to do in it." 
 
 "Indeed ! " said the pious Orthodox woman, with some 
 admonition in her voice. "And what is the whole call 
 ing of ministers but to tell us what is right and true to 
 do?" 
 
 "Oh, y-e-s ! " assented Monuy rather slowly, being 
 infected, young as she was, with so much of our day s 
 distrust of the institutional as to look even for her chief 
 ethical guidance elsewhere than to the pulpit, although 
 its ministrations had her regular Sunday attendance. 
 "Yes. But perhaps the way of the world has changed 
 since the way of sermons began, that mostly I seem to 
 get more practical light from the men of thought and high 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 39 
 
 principle who write about subjects of this earth, that you 
 haven t got to die in order to find out the truth of." 
 
 u Well, my dear, we shall want something for a dying 
 hour too ; and since, for all your gay life, Miss Mouny, 
 I have always found you to be a very conscientious girl, 
 and one showing a proper respect to holy things and 
 ministers" 
 
 " This minister isn t a holy thing ! " cried Miss Money 
 with disdain. "He is one of those preachers, who, what 
 with his size, can lead captive silly women, of course, 
 as was said of some famous preacher, if he only says 
 4 Mesopotamia. He can t have any true eloquence, be 
 cause he s a humbug himself. Oh, yes, he is ! " insisted 
 Monny, as the matron showed signs of expostulating. 
 "A light-minded man in a serious profession is a hum 
 bug ; and no talents can make him otherwise. And if it 
 isn t light-minded for a man to be so outrageously vain 
 as to suppose that a girl can t eat breakfast with him 
 without falling in love with him, and he an old bachelor 
 minister " 
 
 u Now, now, my dear, nobody would call Mr. Leigh an 
 old bachelor." 
 
 "Why, he is as much as thirty," rejoined Monny, sur 
 veying that period of life from her decade on the sunny 
 side of it. " Not as old as he ought to be, of course," 
 she pronounced, with her views as to the duty of ministers 
 to be venerable, " but old enough, and I should think big 
 enough, to be sober-minded ; which he isn t. And as foi 
 etting him see my pictures, he is the very last being in the 
 universe that I would allow to see them, and I shall keep 
 the door of this room fast locked every minute while he 
 stays here. And I shall wish you to be very careful, aunt 
 Persy, not to drop a syllable to let him know that I have 
 ever touched a paint-brush in my life." 
 
40 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 u Oh, there s the butcher s bells!" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Doaue, for a string of bells round his horse s neck 
 heralds the Cape-Cod butcher ; and, trusting to time 
 to reconcile her boarders, the matron rushed down stairs 
 to provide for dinner. 
 
 The young artist thus left alone set seriously to wc.rk. 
 This old house having been a kind of deposit for years 
 of her efforts in art, there were many big canvases in the 
 room, crowded with conceptions daringly impossible for so 
 young a hand and brain to execute, fettered, too, by all 
 those innumerable hamperings incident to the secrecy with 
 which she pursued her art. There were elaborate groups 
 out of poet and romancer, and the girl s own wild head ; 
 but through all these prodigal attempts sketched, half 
 painted, and abandoned could be traced a steady growth 
 of power, and of wisdom, at last, to choose the simpler 
 theme. Thus the picture at present on her easel, which 
 she was working up from a smaller sketch made from the 
 life, and evidently the life of this region, had but a single 
 figure, merely an infirm old fisherman pulling up a boat 
 before a threatening storm. Yet the strip of lone marshy 
 shore, the rising wind in the sky, the passion of the far- 
 struggling sea, with the worn-out old mariner pausing in 
 his broken strength to look out upon it, and realize that he 
 could cope with sea and storm no more, these simple 
 elements were not only rendered with rare technical skill, 
 but so rendered, that the mystery of Nature s eternal 
 eneigy, and the ephemeral life of man, brooded solemn 
 and pathetic over all the canvas. 
 
 The girl who could do these things had toiled with the 
 tireless patience of true genius ; and, if she had had no 
 one to encourage her among her natural protectors, she 
 r.ad had the next best thing, no one to interfere. Her 
 father, Endicott Rivers, came of one of the oldest, and, 
 
A KEVEREND IDOL. 41 
 
 in former generations, most illustrious, of New-England 
 families ; and in young P^ndicott himself the original 
 vigor of the stoek, which had somewhat lapsed in his 
 immediate ancestors, gave marked promise of return. 
 His brilliantly opening life, however, was cut tragically 
 short when he was scarce twenty-five years old, by a 
 sudden explosion in a Western mine, into which he had 
 descended from a traveller s curiosity ; and his young wife 
 had died a few months after from the anguish of this 
 bereavement, leaving baby Anemone which romantic 
 name became Monny, for short scarcely a year old. 
 The child thus orphaned had been reared in the home 
 of her father s sister, Mrs. Helen Rivers Slabwell. This 
 lady (she was more than a dozen years older than her 
 lost brother, Endicott) had not inherited very strongly 
 herself from the intellectual side of her distinguished 
 forefathers. But, if she had very little force of brain or 
 character, she had a radical refinement of feeling and 
 habit, a grace of gentle breeding, which never forsook 
 her, although she had been considered to take a very 
 long step downward in her marriage. The Slabwell 
 mesalliance had proved, however, a truly happy union on 
 both sides. Indeed, as observers will have noted, in 
 marriages where there is some superiority on the side of 
 the wife, if she has the tact to prevent this from becom 
 ing the ugliest of situations, there often resides a pecul 
 iarity enduring element of charm. King Cophetua may 
 grow remiss in attentions to his beggar-maid ; but the 
 page who marries the princess is likely to hold out in the 
 spirit of consideration. 
 
 The princess in this case, Miss Helen Rivers, had been 
 extremely short of revenues when the plebeian John Slab- 
 well, whose revenues were rapidly rising through shrewd 
 investments in lumber, first beheld the lady, and decided, 
 
42 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 that, unless he could spend on her the money tyhich it had 
 thus far been the sole object of his existence to make, 
 that existence would be to him thenceforth and forever 
 a futile and disgusting rack. There was an objecting 
 father, and the lady herself at first objected ; but finally 
 the sheer infatuation of the suitor, who had schemed day 
 and night, raised heaven and earth, to devise orderly 
 means whereby to pursue the mere chance acquaintance 
 which some little accident of travel had given him with 
 the lady born so far out of his circle, this infatuation 
 touched the feminine heart. For among the men of her 
 own circle (although she had not been wholly neglected by 
 them) Miss Helen had never had a truly infatuated lover, 
 as she had nothing in herself which the general masculine 
 verdict would have pronounced striking attractions of 
 either person or mind, and she had lost all the prestige 
 of surroundings by the nearly total ruin of her father s 
 fortunes just as she was entering on young womanhood. 
 In short, she decided to marry this one adorer, who was 
 an adorer indeed (the objecting father being finally re 
 duced), and she never regretted the step. 
 
 Mr. John Slabwell was an American citizen whom 
 re-action from the grim Puritan theology had left with no 
 religion ; large disbelief in the politicians of his own party, 
 and total disbelief in those ~t the other, with no patri 
 otism ; conviction that there was a native and ineradicable 
 tendency in a certain class of human beings .to dirt, rags, 
 and six families in a room, with no social science ; narrow 
 earl} education, and life engrossed thereafter in money- 
 making, with no taste for reading any thing but news 
 papers. There was but one spiritual pole to his being ; 
 viz., a very especial consideration for women. This sav 
 ing trait had kept remarkably upright in various directions 
 a moral constitution which might not otherwise have been 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 43 
 
 very strongly based. Thus he was as severe as any Puri 
 tan on all masculine vices and dissipations, as having a 
 verj direct tendency to make women unhappy. One vital 
 objection he still saw to men s going to the devil, the 
 wrecks of women that would strew their way. To the 
 man with this soft chivalric spot in his hard Yankee com 
 position, his lady- wife was just helpless enough to be 
 endearing. Then the repose which there had been no 
 space for in his own life, the leisure which tie would not 
 have known what to do with personally, he had a delight 
 ful sense of drinking in, ready sublimated, as it were, 
 in the atmosphere of a woman whose graceful step very 
 few earthly occurrences could hasten, whose very words 
 came forth with a gentle slowness which might have 
 wrought on some husbands, in impetuous moments, with 
 any thing but soothing effect. As for the lady, however 
 unlike she always remained to her husband in outward 
 style and bearing, she never assumed the remotest air of 
 a porcelain vase swimming down the stream with an iron 
 pot. Having once decided to become Mrs. Slab well, her 
 very respect for traditions made her loyal to the doctrine, 
 as decidedly one of the oldest of traditions, that the hus 
 band is the head of the wife. She dropped all her old 
 social alfiliations with her marriage ; which she did the 
 more easily as her early married home was set up, not in 
 the city, but at just that suburban distance from it which 
 seems to enable one to arrange life without any dependence 
 on society at all. At least, Mrs. Slabwell found sufficient 
 variety for her tranquil tastes in the daily going and com 
 ing of her husband to and from town, in superintending 
 her sen-ants, watching her babies grow, and the flowers in 
 her conservatory, during his absence, and driving with 
 him, on his return, behind the pair of high-conditioned 
 horses that he always kept, softly swallowing her impulse 
 
4 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 to shriek when they went at their most sp nning pace, 
 reflecting that death or mutilation was the worst that 
 could happen, mere trifles to the rudeness of showing a 
 contrarious hostility to the pleasures of one s husband. 
 In this amiable content Mrs. Slabwell reared her four 
 children to young manhood and young womanhood ; and 
 the last of these was married, and settled in life, just 
 before the niece Monny, who had been educated at a New- 
 York boarding-school, came home (the Slabwells had at 
 this date a fine residence in the city proper) to make her 
 debut as a young lady. 
 
 This event caused an immediate enlargement of the 
 Slabwell circle. Certain especial circumstances gave the 
 young girl some favorable introductions at the outset ; 
 and then on such occasions, for instance, as the grand 
 charitable balls and bazaars of the city furnish for show 
 ing off the fair of one circle to the brave of another, the 
 distinctively fashionable young men walked promptly over 
 whatever line separated their set from that of the Slab- 
 wells, to pay their court to the charming young ward of 
 the lumber-merchant. And when the feminine fashiona 
 bles, those more watchful keepers of the social gates, 
 discovered that the young stranger came of the old Rivers 
 family, they immediately recognized that there was noth 
 ing more to be said. For the old Rivers family (it had 
 softened into Unitarianism in its later generations) had 
 been among the earliest founders of this representative 
 Puritan city of Moralmount : the family had been con 
 spicuous, indeed, in Puritan annals, on the old soil, as far 
 back as the English struggle between Crown and Parlia 
 ment. And although Monny s own grandfather Rivers 
 (he had died shortly after his son Endicott s marriage) 
 bad been chiefly illustrious for the skill with which he had 
 scattered a large inherited fortune without being at all 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 45 
 
 dissipated, being, on the contrary, a most spotless and 
 high-minded gentleman, the sinning ability, as well as 
 the virtue, of the early house of Rivers, was still suf 
 ficiently historic among the old families of Moralmount 
 for this fair young orphan of the line to be welcomed 
 among them with no snubbing. 
 
 Mrs. Slabwell herself might perhaps, ere this, have so 
 far recalled the claims of her maiden name as to upbear 
 her married one, if she had had less pride, and more 
 ambition ; if it had not been both beneath her dignity, and 
 above a certain little indolence which characterized her, to 
 push in the least for social honors. But when, without any 
 vulgarity of pushing, Miss Monny blossomed out into a 
 decided belle in Moralmount best society, those younger 
 and gayer circles of it into which the girl naturally fell, 
 aunt Helen was quietly gratified to chaperon her. 
 
 Nevertheless, to the chaperon s gathering alarm at last, 
 the belle took no marrying interest in any of her numerous 
 train of would-be suitors. No : she did not even senti 
 mentalize with her adorers. Whatever nonsense her nim 
 ble fancy and merry tongue charmed them with, it was 
 not tender nonsense. One single experience, very early, 
 very rash, comprised all her sentimental histories. The 
 girl was not cold-hearted, but deep-hearted; and " ce 
 besoin d affcction qtii devore la jeunesse " had its imper 
 sonal stay in the art which both absorbed and regulated 
 the intense susceptibilities of a poetic nature. 
 
 This present summer, Monny s running away from 
 Newport (where aunt Helen took a cottage solely on her 
 account) to bury herself in her favorite hiding-place at 
 Cape Cod, with her old nurse s relations, had been a par 
 ticularly severe trial to the amiable Mrs. Slabwell. 
 
 4 i Her bloom will be over very soon now : she is almost 
 twenty-One," that lady had lamented to her husband. 
 
46 4 REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 " Now, Helen, the child grows more and more of a 
 rose every day of her life." 
 
 " Still, that peculiarly fair complexion is at its best but 
 a very little while," said the lady, with grave anxiety. 
 
 "Now. Helen, do you suppose men marry a skin? 
 Keally we are not quite so bad as that, not when we 
 see something choicer," said the present elderly husband, 
 remembering how the ladylike grace of Miss Helen Rivers, 
 who had only a pleasing face, had been more fascinating 
 to him than all the pink cheeks in the world. "A girl," 
 declared Mr. Slabwell, k who is more company than a 
 roomful, whom nobody ever gets tired of, morning, noon, 
 nor night, can take her time about marrying, take her 
 time. There s plenty of men that ll want her a long 
 while yet. And you know she likes to go down to that 
 lonesome place just because she can paint pictures there 
 all day long. Let her have her own way." 
 
 " I wonder sometimes," said the wife, u if we have ever 
 done right to let her have her own way so, in painting 
 pictures all her life, and shutting them up where nobody 
 can see them ; though, to be sure, I should hardly wish 
 her to be known as an artist. It is true, that foreigner 
 who gave her lessons at school so long told me that she 
 had a very great genius ; and it s perfectly astonishing, 
 of course, to see the pictures she paints, especially since 
 her trip to Europe with Harry and his wife. But," con 
 tinued aunt Helen doubtfully, tk the young women whom 
 I see occasionally at watering-places, sitting round on 
 camp-stools, sketching, seem to me extremely forward, 
 eccentric young persons, fantastically dressed, and apt 
 to fall into conversation with men to whom they have 
 not been formally introduced ; intending no ill, doubt 
 less," said the lady, " but really not persons whom we 
 should wish to hear Monny mentioned with at all." 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 47 
 
 Thus spoke Mrs. Slabwell, recalling some of .hose 
 crude dabblers in literature and art, which the necessities 
 of our time, and its liberties, have made so numerous 
 among women ; certain specimens of which flighty sister 
 hood, ubiquitous at summer hotels, had crossed aunt 
 Helen s path. "If only," she resumed, imagining with 
 a shudder a niece of hers joined to those unconventional 
 rovers with the camp-stools, who represented to her 
 woman as an artist, "if only Monny had taken more 
 to music, like her mother ! Her mother played and sang 
 beautifully, although she Imd only the advantages of that 
 country-town where she belonged." (Young Kudicott 
 Rivers had so far followed his sister s example as to 
 marry into a family less ancient than his own.) 
 
 " She wrote verses, too, that Endicott said were beauti 
 ful," continued Mrs. Slabwell, "although she never 
 cared to print any thing. Nobody knows, however, 
 what she might have done, if she had not been so bound 
 up in him, and broken her heart at his death." 
 
 "Wasn t your brother given to drawing too?" asked 
 Mr. Slabwell, in some endeavor to reconcile his wife to 
 Monny s sad propensity. 
 
 "Not faces," said Mrs. Slabwell; "only bridges and 
 such things. He was so talented he could have been 
 any thing. But what he really fancied was to be a civil 
 engineer ; although, to please father, he studied law, 
 you know. He was a great reader, too, just like Monny. 
 But still he liked to be out of doors as well, studying the 
 elevations of the land, and the construction of things," 
 said Mrs. Helen, her ideas being rather confused just 
 here. " It was some curiosity of that sort which led him 
 to go down into that mine. He was adventurous, dread 
 fully adventurous, for a young man who was never wild 
 in his habits," sighed the sister. 
 
48 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 4 Well," replied Mr. Slabwell profoundly, "as a girl 
 wouldn t be likely to take to civil engineering, and plan 
 ning bridges, and as the mother wrote poetry, the father s 
 talents might come out in the child in this poetical way 
 of drawing faces. At any rate, it s certain nobody ever 
 put such a taste into the child s head : so it must have 
 been born there. And seeing it has always given her 
 something to take up her mind, so that you never hear 
 her asking, in the dullest of times, what she shall do with 
 herself, let her have her own way," said uncle Slabwell, 
 administering his invariable recipe. u Let her go down 
 to that old place and finish out her summer, if she wants 
 to. Good healthy air down there. She ll come back in 
 the fall fresher than ever." So uncle John had begged 
 Monny off for her visit. 
 
 Mrs. Slabwell was by no means a match-making guard 
 ian of the unseemly eager sort. She merely felt that a 
 girl whom it had pleased Heaven to make a universal 
 attraction to mankind should improve her high privileges 
 of selecting a husband while they were at their best. 
 There were no jealousies in the Slabwell family ; and it 
 had not at all disturbed aunt Helen that her niece should 
 have a social success which her own daughters had never 
 had. Her own children, the loyal wife never forgot, 
 were as near to their father as to herself : so she deemed 
 it fortunate that the marriages which their personal choice 
 had made, among the newer gentry of the city and 
 suburbs, had not been such as to remove them to any 
 chilling height above the paternal ways. But there was 
 still a lingering sentiment in the calmly contented breast 
 of Mrs. Helen Rivers Slabwell which would be gratilied 
 to see some member of the present generation of uer 
 family married into that circle of more traditions where 
 the Rivers family had an original right to stand. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 49 
 
 Also it would be highly convenient if Monny should 
 marry wealth as well as station ; so that the girl s own 
 fortune, which was very moderate, need not be too largely 
 increased by dowry gifts from her uncle, thought Mrs. 
 Sl:tl>well, not loving her niece less, but her own babes 
 more. These babes had grown up, very pleasant but 
 expensive creatures, likely to find ultimate use in their 
 new households, reflected the maternal mind, for all that 
 Mr. Slabwell would have to bequeathe. He would pro 
 vide, of course, for orphaned Monny, as for his own 
 child, if need were. But why should need be? thought 
 aunt Helen, when her niece was a girl whom men sought, 
 utterly regardless of the question whether she owned a 
 pin. 
 
 Yet here was this belle, with such brilliant opportuni 
 ties, encouraging none of her suitors, and taking the most 
 unpractical flights into the desert, as if maidens were 
 young forever. 
 
 Aunt Helen could but sigh a little, in spite of her 
 natural serenity of temper and the marital efforts at con 
 solution. 
 
50 A KEVEKEND IDOL 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE minister was soon deeply at work in the seclusion 
 of his Cape-Cod lodgings. Contrary to his usual 
 practice when sojourning in such by-places, he declined 
 to deliver any sermons at present. It was a very peculiar 
 period with him ; and he chose to be a private hearer, for 
 a while, in the little Orthodox Church of the region, 
 which duly invited the famous Episcopalian to its pulpit. 
 
 So Monny did not hear the preacher, and she had 
 judged the man. As for whatever great things she heard 
 of him in the former capacity, they were, like his fine and 
 superior presence, absolutely nothing to this young seeker 
 after the sincerities, since she believed that his character 
 did not correspond. She remained in a very poor opinion 
 of that character. To begin with, it decidedly cheapened 
 any man in mademoiselle s eyes to have the reputation of 
 being pursued by ladies : he was the occasion of this 
 unbeautiful reverse of " the proper order." Altogether, 
 she avoided his presence to the utmost degree possible in 
 the case of two beings boarding in a simple house like 
 Mrs. Doane s. She esteemed it to be only in her bargain 
 that she should do this, and it certainly was in hei 
 inclination. 
 
 So, being conveniently fond of bread and milk and 
 fiuits. edibles that required no hot serving, she con 
 tinued to take breakfast and tea everywhere but with the 
 
 Mtister : even at dinner she contrived in many ways not 
 v^ sit the meal out with him. And on all other occa- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 51 
 
 sions, although her behavior had no overt incivility, her 
 genuine indifference to the man s existence made her pass 
 him by as if he were a post. 
 
 A man who is regarded as a post by a young woman 
 has this advantage, that he can study the genus fcntina 
 in such a specimen with a calm security, not alwayu 
 vouchsafed a man in these delicate studies, of having 
 nothing to pay for his lessons. 
 
 It certainly behooved a reverend idol to come to what 
 coherent knowledge he could of that mysterious sex with 
 which he inevitably had so much to do ; and a pair of 
 young feminine eyes in which he was so shorn of his 
 beams that plainly a more rayless object in the shape of 
 man had never crossed their vision, this was certainly 
 the providential pair of eyes into which he should look to 
 post himself up in the abstract science of womankind. 
 Doubtless some such conviction of valuable opportunity 
 not to be lost moved Mrs. Doane s clerical boarder in 
 those moments of relaxation when he emerged from his 
 studies, to turn, as he began to, an occasional glance, 
 which had a certain light of curiosity in it, upon the 
 elusive young lady boarder, if by any chance she paused 
 a moment in his atmosphere. 
 
 Such a chance occurred, for instance, one warm after 
 noon, as the minister was inhaling what breeze there was 
 upon a shed-like piazza built out on one side of the Doane 
 house, and styled by the family, the "porch." The 
 porcn was curtained with a variety of twining annuals 
 climbing vigorously to the roof on strings, and was alto 
 gether a cosey bower to read an English review in, of a 
 drowsy hour, as Mr. Leigh was doing, when Miss Rivera 
 came slowly up from some point without the house. In 
 her hand was a small paper parcel which had just come 
 to her from Boston by the railroad express-wagon as she 
 
52 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 was walking in the yard ; and, sitting absently down now 
 on the edge of the porch, she opened the little package 
 on the spot. It contained a long mane of nearly black- 
 brown hair, being that appendage to the feminine toilet 
 known as a switch; and the girl, having compared it 
 approvingly with what seemed a sample lock of hair 
 enclosed, lifted up her fair arms, and coiled the thing 
 twice about her head, as if to test its length. 
 
 The minister regarded this frank operation over the top 
 of his magazine with a puzzled smile, and then remarked 
 aloud, as the first intimation to the absorbed maiden 
 of his presence, "I should say it was not the proper 
 color." 
 
 u Indeed it s a perfect match," answered Monny 
 roundly, facing about to behold this ministerial spy and 
 critic making unasked observations from the other end 
 of the porch. "It is for Clara Macey, who plays the 
 organ in the village church here, and whose head ought 
 to be brought oat," added Miss Rivers, turning back to 
 her switch, which she had begun to comb out with her 
 fingers, braid up, and test the capacities of generally. 
 
 "And the rest of her left in?" asked the gentleman, 
 mystified at this peculiar accenting of words. 
 
 "Certainly subordinated," replied the young lady 
 gravely. "Her head is her point ; and it is all lost go 
 with her hair," she lamented, more to herself than to 
 the reverend inquirer. 
 
 If, by the way, the sober-minded are distressed to find 
 a clergyman indulging in this trivial talk, they must re 
 member that he could only investigate the laws of this 
 young lady s being by taking her on her own plane. 
 Moreovei, as Tertullian s liberty of discourse on the 
 feminine toilet is somewhat curtailed to the modern 
 clergyman, so that really he cannot quite inform his lady- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 53 
 
 hearers from the pulpit that they "have learned their 
 artilices from the demon," it may be that this New-York 
 minister, who certainly had a world of beswitched heads 
 to preach to, had a distinct professional anxiety to ascer 
 tain just how Satanic these arts were. At a! 1 events, he 
 still plied his interrogatories. 
 
 "What! she has lost all her own hair, and her head 
 too?" 
 
 " Lost her own hair ! " repeated Monny, still busy with 
 her disentangling. "She has plenty of hair; too much, 
 in fact, and very nice. Her hair is pretty, but she isn t 
 pretty in her hair." 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Mr. Leigh, filling out for the pres 
 ent with that monosyllable the complete blank which this 
 last deliverance left in his understanding. 
 
 But, after taking breath a little, he returned to the 
 charge, obliged to address, however, the young lady s 
 profile, and mostly the back of her head ; Miss Rivera 
 being much too deeply absorbed with her switch to take 
 any notice of the bass voice talking away at the other end 
 of the stoop, save to throw it answers, when she must, in 
 the most absent manner. 
 
 "A young person," persisted, under this snubbing, 
 the inquiring mind which had forgotten the state of 
 Turkey, and whatsoever else was discussed in the English 
 review, "a young person who suffers under the dis 
 advantage of too much hair, and that misfortune is to be 
 remedied by piling on more hair 
 
 " Too much hair for the way she wears it, all hanging 
 loose, a style not becoming to her," said Monny, with an 
 effort to see if a thoroughly categorical account would 
 appease this tiresome questioner. " So nobody knows 
 that she has any beauty at all, and she does not know it 
 herself. But the shape of her head is perfectly beautiful. 
 
54 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 which is a very rare beauty indeed , and its poise on ner 
 throat; and she has the loveliest little ears," pursued the 
 artist, forgetting in her own enthusiasm the inappreciative 
 audience. " And when her hair is all done up in simple, 
 severe coils, that I am going to make her a little present 
 of this switch to wind solid on, then," pronounced Miss 
 Rivers gravely, "although people may never call her 
 exactly handsome, she will yet be admired for a refined, 
 distinguished air, and it will be a great help to her without 
 and within." 
 
 " Within ! " repeated the minister, surveying yet more 
 curiously, as this exposition went on, the pretty curled 
 creature who made herself a missionary of false hair to 
 others, since she was denied the bliss of wearing any 
 herself. "It is of the nature of amoral support, then, 
 to a young woman to know that she has what is it? 
 ears of a superior style, and a head remarkably joined 
 on?" 
 
 "Certainly," returned Miss Monny, not desiring any 
 conversation at all with the Rev. Mr. Leigh ; but, if he 
 would persist in talking, she was not to be put down by 
 his flippancies, "certainly it is a moral support to a 
 young woman, and every human creature, to be conscious 
 of some good points. That may be a reason," suddenly 
 added mademoiselle, as a new illustrative idea here popped 
 into her head, " why boys in their early growiug-up are 
 generally so much more awkward and distressed in com 
 pany than girls are. Girls at that age are praised just 
 for their looks. But boys looks are at their worst when 
 they are growing up (and nobody cares for boys looks 
 anyway) , and they have no gowns to show them off, and 
 they have not yet come to their brains, and so they are 
 abashed and ill at ease till they are old enough to develop 
 values after their kind, and then they come out comforta- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 55 
 
 ble and self-possessed, and enjoy society themselves, and 
 make it enjoyable for other people; which shows," con 
 cluded the young logician, " that men, as well as women, 
 in order to do their best, have a necessity to be what you 
 may caii admired, if anybody insists on that word, and 
 chooses to give it a silly meaning," said the maiden with 
 a slight toss of her curls. "I mean the men who are 
 not vain," added this paradoxical young person. "Of 
 course perfectly conceited people (such as the Rev. Kenyon 
 Leigh, was the speaker s secret thought) do not need to 
 be sustained by any approval but their own. But the 
 truly fine souls, yes," repeated Miss Monuy with a 
 deeply reflective air, "I should suppose the very finest 
 souls among men might often suffer most from bashful- 
 ness in their early youth ; because, of course, they would 
 be more sensitive than other men, more alive to the ideal, 
 and so more aware of their own crudities." 
 
 Now, as it happened, the very gentleman present could 
 have taken out a first-class brevet as " a fine soul," ac 
 cording to this theory ; since, however little it might 
 appear at this period of his life, Kenyon Leigh had been, 
 in spite of the high social advantages in which he had 
 been reared, a quite morbidly bashful youth. So this 
 young damsel s speeches had some curious touches of 
 reminiscence for him, which made him rather wish to hear 
 her go on a while longer ; and he was a little disappointed, 
 when, bringing that important cue to an end with these 
 last words, she arose, and whisked into the house. 
 
 A day or two later it chanced that Mr. Leigh was 
 again sitting on the stoop a little while after dinner, open 
 ing his mail, when he heard Monny s clear voice calling 
 within the house to Susannah, 
 
 " There s Clara Macey coming along the road. Please 
 ask her to come in. I want to see her a moment." 
 
56 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 It was one of those days, peihaps, when there was 
 nothing in the papers ; for this name pierced to the min 
 ister s consciousness, through the newspaper paragraphs 
 he was reading, as that of the young woman whose head 
 was to be brought out. And, as Miss Macey presently 
 came up the yard, he lifted his eyes, and discreetly, 
 through the vines, took a critical look at the maiden & 
 possibilities of beauty, and really beheld none. 
 
 A slight girl, whose pale, small-featured face looked 
 thin and insignificant, lost as it was in a mass of uncon- 
 fined dark hair, which, slightly crimped, hung from the 
 head in what a man would probably call the mop style 
 of coiffure. This young person, disappearing within the 
 house, re-appeared, after the lapse of some twenty min 
 utes, accompanied by Miss Rivers ; the young villager 
 holding her wide hat in her hand, conscious, perhaps, of 
 a new grace to display, as indeed she had. Miss Rivers 
 had dressed her hair ; and, behold, her head, which was 
 small, was really of the perfect classic mould, and, with 
 her hair deftly coiled in a manner to bring out its beauti 
 ful arches, she was quite another being. The low brow 
 and finely-pencilled eyebrows had a decided beauty ; the 
 pale complexion, which was yet pure, harmonized well 
 with the type of face, which, now that the bushy hair was 
 so arranged as to be a grace instead of a drawback, had 
 verily that delicate, distinguished air which the gospeller 
 of vanity beside her had averred to be its quality. Really, 
 as the two maidens moved about among the flower-beds, 
 Monny cutting a bouquet for the caller, it struck the 
 observing minister as rather a pretty deed, for a foolish 
 one, that the girl on whom Nature had lavished so much 
 should take such pains to bring out the quieter charm of 
 her less fortunate sister. So, when the latter had de- 
 Darted, what did the clergyman do but make a remark to 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 57 
 
 Miss Rivers as she came up the walk, congratulating her 
 on her success. 
 
 The young lady, lifting her eyes to behold Mr. Leigh 
 again behind the curtaining vines, minding things so far 
 from his proper business, replied gravely, "Yes: I have 
 studied the modes of hair." 
 
 " Has it not cost much time to gain such a high mastery 
 of modes?" asked the minister, his eye unconsciously 
 straying over Miss Monny s toilet, a simple white one ; 
 but the man recognized in it, as a man might, some mys 
 terious felicity of arrangement. 
 
 " Time? " repeated Monny : " that is according to how 
 much force you put into the time. For myself, I put my 
 soul to the fashions." With which calm declaration in 
 the face of a clergyman, the butterfly vanished. 
 
 " What have you been saying to the minister? " asked 
 Mrs. Doane within the house. 
 
 41 H m! He volunteered some weary old suggestion 
 about the time women waste on dress. And I told him 
 that the way not to waste time on dress was to give your 
 whole mind and strength to it for just a day or two, 
 spring and fall, when the new fashions come, and then 
 shake your soul clear of the whole subject till the next 
 season," said Monny, whose habit of bestowing on the 
 clergyman only the briefest verbal droppings from her 
 inward processes of mind made hei words often convey 
 to his brain any thing but her real meaning. 
 
 "By the way, aunt Persy," continued the girl, "it 
 really seems to me that women themselves those who 
 write on dress-reform, I mean help to belittle their sex, 
 although, of course, they don t intend it, by their ever 
 lasting harangues on dress. It does give such an imbe 
 cile impression of women to hear, that, after so many 
 thousand years, they haven t got the first rag of their 
 
58 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 garments right yet. My women s-rights books up stairs 
 are full of assertions that the present style of feminine 
 dress absolutely necessitates endless worry and waste of 
 time and every thing. Now, any observer knows that 
 the world of difference there is in different women in their 
 faculty of dressing well on small means is not nearly so 
 much in the quantity of time they spend as in their quali .y 
 of sense about clothes ; that is, taste in choosing what A 
 pretty, and prudence in buying what will wear well. * 
 
 " I think you re quite right, my dear," said the old 
 lady. "I find myself that these women s-rights talkers 
 stretch things terribly. But then it s always more striking 
 to propose some entirely new order of things than to con 
 sider whether the fault with the old order isn t merely an 
 abuse of it by a foolish class who would abuse anything." 
 
 "Of course," rejoined Monny. And, the outer air 
 being now cleared of the minister (he was just heard 
 going up the front stairs) , the girl sauntered back into it 
 again, by a side door, to regain, in a few moments soli 
 tary stroll under the open sky, her mood of work, after 
 the little interruption of her hair-dressing benevolence. 
 There was an apple-orchard which came well up in range 
 of the house on one side, the low Cape-Cod trees branch 
 ing too near the ground for even Monny to walk upright 
 under them ; but the straight outer line of the orchard 
 was a favorite little promenade with her when the bosky 
 tops of the trees just shadowed her head with the wester 
 ing sun. As she paced there now, her fair musing face 
 a little bent, the minister, seating himself at his study - 
 table up-stairs, glanced down, all unobserved, through 
 the white fringes of his festooned cotton window-curtains, 
 and smiled to himself, thinking how much like a serious 
 being that young girl looked, if one did not know that 
 she was merely putting her soul to the fashions. 
 
A RI:VI:UI:ND IDOL. 59 
 
 Probably, indeed, the universal attention which this 
 girl s face was wont to draw among far more perfect ones 
 was because even the casual eye was surprised by it 
 somewhat in the same way as was the minister ; that is, 
 the life of thought in Mouny rayed out through a style of 
 face not currently supposed to belong to the thoughtful 
 woman. So the quality of expression which would have 
 made a plain woman called intellectual looking was chiefly 
 recognized in this pretty creature as giving some peculiar 
 light to her beauty. Strangers would turn in a crowd 
 for a second glance at this vivid young face, to find, on 
 such glance, that it was not so perfectly handsome as it 
 had seemed, but was even more striking. 
 
 The minister certainly did not ascribe unusual mental 
 activity to his fellow-boarder; for she seemed the very 
 idlest of all young human flowers, folding her fair leaves 
 for a while in this Cape-Cod retirement, he concluded, in 
 order to re-open more freshly for the season of city gaye- 
 ties. Her convoy of elegant youth had disappeared ; and 
 she had, as sole company, the oddest variety of local 
 visitors, whom she would entertain in her rooms through 
 all the long morning hours, half-grown girls from the 
 village, with some points of picturesque beauty in their 
 faces ; little boys rather extravagantly ragged and bare 
 legged for this tidy region ; and, above all, one strange, 
 gaunt old fisherman and his old wife, living several miles 
 awiiy in a wild solitude of the seashore on the back side 
 of the Cape. This aged son of the sea was known bj 
 the sole name of Isry-Chris, which was short for hu 
 full baptismal name of Israel Christopher. Whatovei 
 the family name was to which this superior appellation, 
 recalling at once the head of the chosen race and of 
 navigators, had been prefixed, it was entirely obsolete 
 by some exaggeration of a custom, peculiar to the re- 
 
60 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 moter regions of the Cape, of calling all individuate 
 blessed with a double baptismal by that as by their full 
 name. As for the old wife, she had lost her name, Lap- 
 tismals and all ; but she had a special piece of her hus 
 band s name assigned to her whenever it was necessary 
 to speak of the pair separately ; thus she was invariably 
 Aunt Isry, and he Uncle Chris. 
 
 The Isry-Chrisses this was the name always used to 
 denote the family as a unit carried on quite a commerce 
 with Mrs. Doane, especially during the time of her sum 
 mer boarders, as .Uncle Chris raised certain delicate 
 varieties of fish out of the waters on the back side of 
 the Cape, while Aunt Isry raised particularly fat chickens 
 on the land ; likewise they peddled all manner of berries 
 in their season. But, whatever relations of trade they 
 had with Mrs. Doane, they had apparently intimate rela 
 tions of friendship with her young lady boarder, who not 
 only had them up in her rooms by the hour, but once or 
 twice the kind of wagon-cart in which the Isry-Chrisses 
 made their journeys had arrived, beautifully swept and 
 garnished, with an extra seat inserted, upon which Miss 
 Rivers rode away in state to make a visit of days at 
 the fisherman s cottage across the Cape. The minister 
 rather missed her in these absences ; for the girl had 
 some effect of a sunbeam on his present grave mood, 
 itn idle, tricksy flash, that he turned to catch sometimes 
 in a passing humor of the moment, to see how insub 
 stantial the airy brightness was. So he found it cheery 
 one day, after such an absence of Miss Monny, to hear, 
 as he camo in from his afternoon rambles, her young 
 voice again in the family sitting-room as she was dancing 
 about there with her blithe queries after the household. 
 
 "Where s Popo?" he heard her ask ; and, supposing 
 this to be one of her innumerable appellations for Duke 
 
A EEVEKEND IDOL. 61 
 
 George, he pushed the unlatched door, made his proper 
 greetings to the newly-returned, and kindly informed her 
 in what direction he had last seen the quadruped. 
 
 Mouny bowed silently, with some kind of suppression 
 in her face, which was presently interpreted to Mr. Leigh 
 by overhearing her, before he reached his study, run after 
 Mrs. Doane, crying in the resonant sotto voce of a child 
 bursting with restrained laughter, "Did you hear the 
 minister tell me where Popo was ? Is thy servant a 
 dog ? I meant Popo for himself, short for Popocata- 
 petl, highest peak of the Rockys ! " And the all-adored 
 preacher of St. Ancient s, reduced to having his health 
 inquired after by a young lady as the Rev. Popocatapetl s, 
 attained his apartments. 
 
 Nevertheless, whatever whim it was which made the 
 busy minister wont to break out of his pre-occupations 
 with some word to stay this ever-flitting girl when he 
 could catch her, seized him just as often after he knew 
 that she called him names as before. There were curious 
 touches of mystery about her. For instance, on those 
 long solitary rambles which she took daily, she was sure 
 to have on her arm an angular, frame-like thing, loosely 
 wrapped in a shawl (it was her sketching-apparatus, 
 which, since Mr. Leigh s advent, Monny kept thus con 
 cealed) . 
 
 44 What is that square bundle that you carry about so 
 much? " he asked her bluntly one morning in the porch, 
 as sne came in glowing from her early walk, just as he 
 was going out. 
 
 "It s a mirror," shortly answered Monny, entering 
 the house. 
 
 "What do you say such things to the minister for? " 
 asked Mrs. Doane within doors, as Mr. Leigh wexit 
 beyond hearing. 
 
62 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 "To strike him dumb," laughed Monny, remembering 
 the amaze on Mr. Leigh s face ; for he gave this young 
 lady such credit for candor, he had accepted her state 
 ment as the literal truth. 
 
 " You should have seen his eyes," the girl went on, 
 half laughing, and half indignant. " It was a little more 
 than he expected, and he expects a good deal in the way 
 of idiocy in women. Oh, yes ! he does. I know him. 
 And you needn t always stand up for him so, aunt 
 Persy," said the maid, shaking her head at the matron 
 with affectionate sauciness. 
 
 "It is a mirror, mirror of nature," repeated Mon 
 ny, sitting down, and making good her asseveration to 
 Mr. Leigh by writing the above title in her sketchbook 
 on the spot, affixing the date of month and year with a 
 great flourish. 
 
 "Does he deserve the truth," demanded Miss Monny, 
 shutting her book thus christened, with a bang, "when 
 he actually swallowed what I told him as a fact? A man 
 capable of believing that a girl tugs a looking-glass two 
 feet square all over these sands ! and he preaches to 
 women, great, crammed churchfuls of them, (more fools 
 they!) and tells them they have immortal souls, of 
 course ; and all the while, clown at the bottom, he has 
 such an opinion of them as that. If a girl must admire 
 her own face out on a morning walk, as if she couldn t 
 find a pool, like Narcissus ! " 
 
 " Narcissus? " queried Mrs. Doane rather blankly. 
 
 "The vainest man that ever lived except a spoilt 
 minister," explained the damsel. 
 
 " Now, Miss Monny, when there could never be a 
 gentleman of more simple, unpretending ways than Mr. 
 Leigh." 
 
 "H m!" rejoined Miss Rivers. "I never said he 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 63 
 
 strutted visibly, that he had any cheap, parading ways 
 of vanity. The man has a good outward style, of course, 
 just by being brought up in good society ; but down in his 
 soul he s a lordly, woman-despising, domineering " 
 
 Any further expense of adjectives on Mr. Leigh s 
 account was here cut short by Monuy s running to the 
 front door, which opened at the moment to admit her 
 model for the day. It was her habit to spend the morn 
 ing hours in painting from the life ; her models, of course, 
 being that queer train of visitors which the minister had 
 remarked. But the afternoon hours, when she painted 
 without her models, she spent in her closest and most 
 exhausting work ; and, from the silence which prevailed 
 in her apartments, the minister concluded that she de 
 voted this part of the day to solid sleep. Yes : he would 
 see her come down and walk under the lee of the orchard 
 at its close, with eyes in which dreams seemed still lin 
 gering. Sometimes, however, she looked strangely weary 
 (the lonely artist had many misgivings this summer, 
 although she toiled more consecutive hours at her easel 
 than she had ever done before) ; there was a languor in 
 her girlish step, something like dejection in all her young 
 movements, which made her silent observer from the 
 upper windows wonder if some mysterious malady was 
 preying on this radiant girl ; and he began to soften his 
 substantial tread when he passed her door in those silent 
 afternoon hours, lest the frail sleeper should be awakened. 
 
 Monny s being one of those high nervous organizations 
 to which a wink of sleep by daylight is a constitutional 
 impossibility, she considered the minister s view of her 
 capacity as a sleeper (revealed to her by Susannah, who 
 had observed the bated step with which the considerate 
 Hercules stole through the upper entry of afternoons) to 
 be only one more proof of his contemptuous estimate of 
 
64 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 young ladies ; and she kept stiller than ever in her apart 
 ments to confirm him in his precious idea of the way in 
 which she passed her time. 
 
 It was perhaps in this idea of Monny s fragility, that 
 one moonlight night Mr. Leigh woke out of the re very 
 in which he was pacing up and down before the house 
 to observe that the young lady was sitting bareheaded on 
 a wayside rock at a little distance in the quiet road. She 
 so grew on his mind at every turn in his walk, that finally 
 he went into the house and rummaged in the entry to find 
 some shawl belonging to her, but could lay hands on 
 nothing but a broad-leafed straw hat, armed with which 
 wrap he presented himself to the maiden. 
 
 4 Miss Rivers, you should not be sitting so long out in 
 the night air without any protection," he said. 
 
 The young lady slowly turned her head, and surveyed 
 the intrusive gallant with so distant a gaze he might as 
 well have proposed to put a jacket on the moon which 
 she had been contemplating. Dropping, at last, her 
 gradual eyes to the object in his hand, with a look 
 which expressed both her sense of the man s audacity 
 in meddling with the articles of her wardrobe, and of the 
 absurdity of his selection therefrom, she said, " Thank 
 you, I am not particularly subject to colds in the head 
 myself." The minister had at this moment some remains 
 of such a cold which he had taken a few days previous. 
 
 " The night air seems to be very full of other people," 
 she added dryly ; for not only the minister was abroad 
 without a vestige of a hat on his own head, the day had 
 been intensely hot, but Mrs. Doane was visible by the 
 moonlight taking the air among her flower-beds ; and 
 Susannah, also, was discerned at the moment spreading 
 linen to bleach on the grass. "Every member of the 
 household is forth," said Miss Monny. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 65 
 
 "The rest are stirring about," replied Mr. Leigh:" 
 "you alone are sitting here perfectly still. There is a 
 very great difference." 
 
 " Yes : those who stir about make a wind round them, 
 all the wind there is to-night : so they are iu draughts, 
 which I am not. They are in a way to take cold, and 
 not I." 
 
 The reason-defying nonsense which mademoiselle thus 
 coolly babbled did not prevent her from looking extremely 
 lovely as she sat there in the moonlight : so the minister 
 was not disgusted enough to say any thing more severe 
 than 
 
 "Miss Rivers, you must be aware that what it pleases 
 you to say is contrary to all experience." 
 
 " This will be found contrary to all experience, yet it is 
 true," quoted Monny loftily. " I read that in a book as 
 having been said by some great man when announcing the 
 laws of a new discovery he had just made. It was pro 
 nounced a sublime saying." 
 
 " It was certainly a bold one," answered Mr. Leigh. 
 
 "All great things have the quality of boldness," pro 
 nounced Monny magisterially. "The philosopher knew, 
 of course, that the large mind and the mean mind have 
 not the same experiences ; that they are impressed by 
 precisely the same fact in an entirely different way." 
 
 But since the large mind and the mean mind are alike 
 enclosed in physical tissues on which the fact of night 
 dews makes very much the same impression, your illustra 
 tion is hardly in point." 
 
 " Many other things are not in point, not in point at 
 all," retorted Monny, wishing to make this intruder under 
 stand that his presence was not in point, and wondering 
 how much flaring impertinen.ce and absurdity it would take 
 to convince him of it. 
 
G6 A EEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 Apparently it would take a good deal while the maiden 
 sat there unshawled. He stood stolidly immovable, al 
 though allowing the hat, which Monny s eyes had scanned 
 so satirically, to drop stealthily on the ground. The belle, 
 of course, made him aware, by an infinitesimal move 
 ment of her eyelids, that she saw this, and that it was 
 still another infelicity. But just here, before he had com 
 mitted any thing else, a more fortunate beau appeared 
 on the scene. This was a fisherman of the region, who 
 came driving up the moonlit lane in a wagon, from which 
 he jumped to announce to Miss Monny that there was 
 such a rare fine sight off the pier in the village, he was 
 sure she would like to see it, and so druv up to tell her, 
 a big excursion-party from somewhere, with music, and 
 lights dancing over the water, making a perfect picture 
 for her. The young artist s pursuits were well known 
 through the neighborhood, exciting much admiring awe, 
 and a zeal to provide her with subjects, which was apt 
 to be more devoted than intelligent. 
 
 Just now, however, Miss Monuy welcomed eagerly the 
 proffered opportunity to see the picturesque. She replied 
 to the skipper that she should be delighted to go with 
 him as soon as she could run to the house and get some 
 wraps. 
 
 He could take her off in his boat on the water : the boat 
 would carry several, the sailor said, meaning to indicate 
 that there would be room on the present excursion for the 
 distinguished gentleman boarder who was standing by, 
 but leaving it to the lady, of course, directly to select 
 the company. 
 
 The lady had not the slightest idea of selecting the 
 Rev. Kenyon Leigh to be of the company : so, without 
 a word, she started at once for the house. The skippei 
 obediently followed her lead, stopping only to pick up the 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 67 
 
 neglected hat which he spied on the ground. This he 
 neatly dusted, and, with the native gallantry of the Jack 
 tar, presented to the young lady ; she putting on at once, 
 and with the most smiling thanks, the head-covering which 
 she had so scornfully rejected at Mr. Leigh s hands. 
 
 Then, leading his animal and the attached wagon with 
 his off hand, the sailor walked beside Miss Monny up to 
 the house-gate, paying all his devoirs to the belle with a 
 manner, which in its felicitous mingling of respect as to 
 a superior, and naive eagerness to serve the fair maiden, 
 no art could have improved on. 
 
 Mrs. Doane declined the invitation extended her to be 
 of this impromptu party, but Susannah was eager to go ; 
 and the sailor soon drove away with Miss Monny and the 
 black woman. 
 
 The omitted gentleman boarder had seen a great many 
 of the most brilliant sights of earth ; but he stood looking 
 after the retreating wagon with a curious, disappointed 
 longing to see whatever trumpery spectacle might be off 
 the Lonewater coast this evening. He had a vision of a 
 boat rocking on the moonlit waves, and that rash girl 
 needing some one to take care that her shawl was well 
 wrapped about her. 
 
68 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 U ~TN the midst of this Pagan tumultuous hive there 
 -L sweetly and piously dreams a mystic of ancient 
 days, Fra Angelico da Fiesole. . . . He never took up 
 his brushes without kneeling in prayer, and never painted 
 a Christ on the cross without his eyes being filled with 
 tears. It was his custom not to retouch or recast any 
 of his pictures, but to let them remain as they first left 
 his hand, believing that they were as they were through 
 the will of God." 
 
 Over these words Monny had paused one summer day 
 ere her coming to the Cape, as she sat reading Taine s 
 " Italy;" feeling her own self in " a Pagan tumultuous 
 hive," in the fashionable hotel where she was staying 
 with her uncle and aunt, keeping, between dancing and 
 driving, some remnant of her soul to art by devouring 
 in toto the books of the brilliant French critic. Need 
 enough felt this lonely, toiling girl to kneel in prayer 
 before ever taking up her brushes, and, in her many mis 
 givings over her dreadfully mixed-up nature and sur 
 roundings, to lay hold of the assurance that she was as 
 she was by the will of God. So those far-off Catholic 
 saints struck her as men that she would like to read more 
 about, beings who spent their lives in reaching out after 
 the unseen, in strivings which had no earthly reward. 
 These, she fancied, must be the lives to quicken hers ; 
 and accordingly, when she came through Boston, en route 
 for Mrs. Doane s retreat, she went into an antiquarian 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 69 
 
 bookstore there, as the supposed proper place for such 
 lore, and bought of a boy, the chief antiquary having 
 gone out to his dinner, some Holy Fathers. The boy, 
 bein<r of a sufficient age to think how pretty this pious 
 young customer was, ransacked his unlearned best ; and 
 a precious collection the innocent pair got together. 
 
 Ardent girls who ever plunged into the writings of the 
 old Catholic celibates, dreaming to find there "the inno 
 cence of the calm spirit preserved in the cloister, the 
 rapture of the blessed spirit that sees God," have found, 
 for one thing, such a portion meted out to their sex as 
 would indeed prove, in the words of Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, that " the priest has had for woman but a curse 
 and a command." Such books had this unguided gill 
 gathered, seeking the brethren of the gentle Fra Angol- 
 ico, books whose perusal would certainly have caused 
 her some darker pain of bewilderment over the "woman 
 question" than any of the latter-day writings on that 
 subject which had so perplexed her. The absent-minded 
 Monny, however, forgot her antiquarian purchase in the 
 Boston depot, and again forgot to send back from the 
 Cape to have it expressed to her, until the package, 
 handed about from one depot official to another, was so 
 slow in being found, that it did not come through to the 
 house of Mrs. Doane until Mr. Leigh had been there 
 some weeks. 
 
 There, as it chanced, it was handed up by the express 
 man over the familiar porch, one August day, just as 
 Monny was going out equipped for a walk, and Mr. 
 Leigh was coming in. 
 
 u Oh, my saints have come at last, I hope ! " said Miss 
 Rivers, beginning to pull at the twine string of the 
 package, in her eagerness ; whereat Mr. Leigh, stopping 
 to produce his pocket-knife, cut the same, and, the 
 
70 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 wrapping-paper being torn off, the lost books were dis 
 closed. 
 
 4 Do not trouble yourself to go up-stairs again for 
 those," said the minister, as Monny was turning back to 
 carry her books to her room. " I am going up-stairs 
 directly. Allow me to take them, and leave them at your 
 
 door. 
 
 This very small attention Monny could but accept ; and, 
 saying a brief " Thank you ! " she transferred her books 
 to Mr. Leigh, and went on her way. The minister, 
 going up-stairs with the books piled loosely on his arm, 
 turned them up for a moment, and ran his eye carelessly 
 over the names on their backs, finding it not at all new 
 in his experience of young ladies, that the very giddiest 
 of them should be given to some pious reading of the 
 tenderly sentimental sort. 
 
 It required but a glance at Monny s ignorantly chosen 
 volumes for Mr. Leigh to know that the kind of lore 
 which they contained was not desirable reading for any 
 girl ; and the idea of these pages falling under the child 
 like eyes of this particular girl, so indefinably annoyed 
 him as a man and a minister, that, instead of depositing 
 the books at their owner s door, he marched them forth 
 with into his own rooms, and stowed them away in com 
 plete hiding there. 
 
 So Monny did not find her books ; but being a forgetful 
 maiden, and absorbed at her easel, she did not remember 
 to inquire for them until the next afternoon, when she 
 went down to the stoop at the minister s usual hour of 
 reading there, and said to him, "If you please, Mr 
 Leigh, I did not find my saints yesterday." 
 
 Mr. Leigh looked up. His impulse to confiscate those 
 Holy Fathers had not waited on the question whether it 
 would be easy to account for the proceeding or not ; and 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 71 
 
 he was only more in the same mind now, as the girl 
 stood in the open porch, looking like the creature of light, 
 which she always did when the full day shone on her. 
 So he answered deliberately, 
 
 44 No. I carried them into my own room." 
 
 Monny waited silently to be informed when her prop 
 erty would be handed out from that apartment ; but she 
 was only met with the decree : 
 
 " Those books are not the best reading for you. Per 
 fect moral action," continued the divine, casting about 
 in his mind for any explanation possible to make to this 
 young maiden, and inspired to nothing more skilful than 
 to proceed thus sermonically, perfect moral action 
 being perfect obedience to what we know of right, the 
 struggles of honest souls in any age to attain that obedi 
 ence, according to their own standard, may be a useful 
 study for the disciplined mind. But the very young and 
 inexperienced need to seek their models in lives not too 
 far removed from the conditions of their own. Latin 
 monks and American young ladies are very utterly re 
 moved beings." 
 
 Mr. Leigh being much too delicate minded a man to 
 betray, even by a conscious look, the particular line in 
 which the Romish volumes offended, Monny could imagine 
 nothing in this censorship over her reading, but a last 
 impertinence of the woman-despising" minister, an 
 insinuation that young ladies could not be trusted to 
 read Popish books, lest they should become enamoured of 
 Popish practices ; and she burst out indignantly, 
 
 "I think I should have sense enough to know that 
 what is to be imitated in good men is their spirit, and not 
 their literal doings, and that 1 need not put ashes on my 
 head, nor peas in my shoes, because the saints did : and I 
 don t know of anybody to study in American conditions 
 
72 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 but George Washington, and I ve got sick of him. Aa 
 for saints," added the girl, with a sudden threatening 
 Hash in her eye, demurely turned to the horizon, " there s 
 nothing to stand for them in a Protestant country but 
 ministers ; and their personal goodness, which is the only 
 goodness I have any respect for, is of course dreadfully 
 exposed to be all drained away by their profession of 
 preaching; for some writer says, Every time a man 
 speaks of fine purposes, especially if he does it with elo 
 quence, the less likely he is to accomplish them him 
 self. " 
 
 u Carlyle," said the minister, meekly furnishing the 
 authority for the quotation that smashed him. 
 
 "Well, he is one of the greatest of writers, and of 
 course he had observed truly." And, tossing her nose in 
 the air, Miss Anemone Rivers, having propounded these 
 sayings by no means with the slightest touch of jesting, 
 but as one who launched incontrovertible propositions into 
 space, that might hit where they would, swept into the 
 house. 
 
 The minister s eyes remained at gaze for a long moment 
 on the spot where his young castigator had vanished, some 
 singular light playing over his face. One would have 
 said that he was hoping she would re-appear ; but, as there 
 was certainly no chance of that, he rose at length, and 
 walked slowly up to his study. 
 
 As for Monny, she went surging into Mrs. Doane s 
 bedroom, on the other side of the house, shutting the 
 door vigorously behind her, and dropping on a low stool 
 in the midst of a heap of bright-colored rags which Mrs. 
 Doane, at work on a fancy rug, was cutting there to avoid 
 disturbing the shining order of the sitting-room. 
 
 11 Now what do you think that minister has done? " was 
 Monny s first word ; and she floridly related the seizure of 
 
A Jl EVER END IDOL. 73 
 
 her books. " Docs an Episcopal minister think himself 
 Tope?" she cried at the end of her story. u lie isn t 
 Tope of me ! I come of the Puritans, the English Puri 
 tans, way back on the Rivers side, I do, the regular 
 old rampageous sort, that wouldn t pay the ship-money, 
 nor bow down to the bishops 
 
 44 Now, my dear child," calmly interposed the matron, 
 " tho minister, not imagining how much you know about 
 boots yourself, only meant to advise you a little, as a 
 y>uug girl, about your reading. He could never have 
 intended really to keep your books," said Mrs. Doane., 
 considering herself that this would be a rather high 
 handed proceeding. " What did you say to him? " 
 
 44 1 answered him back," said the girl, with a naughty 
 shake of her head. 44 IIe is spoiling my manners, and 
 miking me impudent and horrid. But wh} 7 can t he keep 
 to himself? That was the bargain," cried injured Moniiy, 
 with an allusion which the widow did not understand. 
 4k I don t like him, but I m willing to let him civilly alone. 
 Why can t he let me alone? Isn t he always asking me 
 questions? perfectly needless ones, and uncommonly 
 stupid," pronounced the maid, with big scornful eyes. 
 
 There was no manner of doubt that the remarks which 
 Mrs. Doane s clerical boarder had grown more and more 
 ad licted to bestowing on the young lady boarder wen* 
 perfectly needless ; and, as to their quality of stupidity, it 
 must be confessed that Mr. Leigh had not exerted him 
 self in the least to shine in conversational biilliancy to 
 this maiden, the sole end and aim of all the speeches 
 which he addressed to her being t<} draw out her own. 
 As he was wont, however, to make these tentative remarks 
 to Mouny when no third person was present, Mrs. Doane 
 had not had opportunity to judge of their superfluous and 
 imbecile nature. And, as the reverend churchman had 
 
74 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 grown this long while into his landlady s most exalted 
 esteem and veneration, she only sat thinking now how she 
 should disabuse Monny of her false notions regarding 
 him, as the vexed girl went on, 
 
 44 What does he mean? I suppose a popular ministei 
 gets to be a kind of holy Turk. He is so used to having 
 the whole female household of faith bow down to him, 
 that, even although he despises women, he thinks he 
 owns them, and expects them to consult him as their lord 
 and master. Think of a man," cried Monny, reviewing 
 her wrongs, " who first puts the imposition on a peaceable 
 girl of objecting to board in the house where she is., for 
 fear she will trouble him with attentions, and next puts 
 on her the imposition of troubling her himself with curious, 
 meddlesome, gratuitous " 
 
 44 Now, now, my dear," interposed again the remon 
 strant widow, " whatever made the minister think of going 
 away from here for the first day or two, it s certain that 
 he has staid ever since as satisfied and pleased as can be 
 with the house, and" Mrs. Doane was going to say, 
 "with you." But she checked herself, and merely re 
 sumed, "it s very certain, Miss Monny, that Mr. Leigh 
 never could have meant- any thing so rude as to keep 
 your books. You say they are Roman-Catholic books ; 
 and, so many girls think there s something romantic about 
 being a nun, he was going to warn you a little against 
 those superstitions, since, according to your own account, 
 the amount of what he said was that those kind of writ 
 ings were safer for older people to read than for the 
 young. Of course, as I ve said, he doesn t guess how 
 wise you are in books yourself, and too steadfast in 
 common sense to be blown round in any such way. But, 
 my clear, he wouldn t have made such a mistake, if you 
 ever showed him your serious side." 
 
A REVEUEND IDOL. 75 
 
 41 1 don t want to show him any sides," pouted disdain 
 fill Monny. 
 
 ".But at least," persisted the matron, " as the fair- 
 minded girl I ve always known you to be before, you 
 would wish to see his true side ; and that s what I think 
 you don t at all do justice to." 
 
 " Yes, I do, plenty of justice," declared Monny, who 
 had her own private memory of that conference by the 
 seashore in which she had set the minister s duty in order 
 before him as to his landlady : so all the spontaneity was 
 gone, to her eyes, from his subsequent virtuous behavior 
 in tluit line. 
 
 " His true side is shown," she burst out afresh, "by 
 his engaging a boarding-place, and making all the trouble 
 of getting ready for him, and then preparing to leave it 
 for no cause at all. That s what he calls perfect moral 
 actions! " cried this practical young hearer, to whom the 
 fine discourse on the stoop had gone for mere sounding 
 brass. " He d better go home to his big church in New 
 York, and hire him a seat in the pews, and get himself 
 soundly preached to one solid year. Only preaching 
 wouldn t do him any good ; he knows the trick of it too 
 well : it would be like two Roman augurs winking at each 
 other on the sly, while they humbugged the people with 
 their signs and wonders." 
 
 Who the Roman augurs were good Mistress Doane did 
 not know ; but what she did know was that the clergy 
 were being spoken of, and by her well-beloved young 
 lady, in a style which seemed bordering on the sacrilegious, 
 and she broke in with a more gravely admonitory tone than 
 she had used before, 
 
 "Miss Monny, Miss Monny, you was speaking a few 
 moments ago of those righteous old forefathers of yours 
 way back in England ; and I used to think that something 
 
76 A REVEREND IDOI. 
 
 of those far-off ancestors had come down to you to make 
 you strong in the days of your youth, to I e so in the gaY 
 world, and yet not of it, in your way of being so earnest 
 to know and see into the rights of things. But, certain, 
 you are getting out of that way about this minister, ray 
 dear. Mr. Leigh is something more than just a famous 
 preacher for show: for all our people whom he meets 
 here round in his walks take to him wonderful, down to 
 the little children ; and, as there s no more chance of ever 
 setting up an Episcopal church here than there is of a 
 Mohammedan mosque, he can t have any proselyting 
 views. Indeed, he looked into our own Orthodox Sunday- 
 school library soon after he came here, to see what books 
 were in it ; and he s made them a present of a great box 
 of new ones, as the superintendent told me came a day 
 or two ago on the cars ; so that, with my two boarders, 
 this parish will be quite set up for a library," said the 
 widow with pride. For Monny, to whose young life 
 books had been so much, often made her little presents 
 of a few volumes at a time to this only public library 
 which Lonewater possessed. Monny s gifts were not of 
 the tract order of literature. 8 he was not very strong in 
 the line of tracts : but with her own discursive reading she 
 had managed to make a pretty shrewd choice of books 
 that could be squeezed into a Sunday-school library, and 
 yet were not the pseudo-pious trash usually considered 
 the proper thing for such collections ; and the liberal- 
 minded clergyman, in his examination of the store in the 
 little Orthodox vestry, had paused over more than one 
 well-thumbed volume of Monny s bestowing, a little won 
 dering what enlightened sense had put it on those shelves. 
 
 "I have never told you before," the widow continued, 
 " about Mr. Leigh s good deeds in this village, seeing 
 plainly that he wouldn t like to have them paraded 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 77 
 
 But I know he has had poor widow Cottrell s house 
 shingled for her, and bought her biggest boy, that s just 
 getting old enough to go on the maekerel-fishing, a now 
 dory for his own, and helped Skipper Saunders, that s 
 had a long sickness, and owns nothing but his schooner, 
 to get it new rigged and furnished, as twas all out of 
 repair. It isn t his being so generous with his money in 
 all this that I look at ; for being born of wealthy parents, 
 as I hear he is on both sides, and already come into a 
 large fortune on his mother s side, by reason of her 
 death, I dare say, with all this riches, and being open- 
 handed by nature, it s nothing at all to him to give money. 
 But his looking so considerate into the wants of people 
 he ll never see again after a few weeks, and having the 
 gift to help them that have never been used to take regular 
 charity, without hurting their feelings, that shows what 
 a very rare spirit is in him ; and it is the more beautiful to 
 see in a gentleman that s been brought up in a way never 
 to know any thing about privations himself." 
 
 Monny, being sufficiently a Unitarian to have a great 
 respect for good works, had become an attentive listener 
 to Mrs. Doane : so the latter went on, while still braiding 
 her rags : 
 
 " I remember saying to you, my dear, when Mr. Leigh 
 first came here, that I thought women ran into foolishness 
 sometimes, in their over-devotion to ministers. But I 
 should be very sorry if by any careless speaking, and to 
 a girl so young as yourself, I should have seemed to slur 
 over the fact that women have very particular cause to 
 honor ministers as the men whose set calling it is to bring 
 the reign of virtue on the earth. For the reign- of evil on 
 the earth will always bear hardest on women and the little 
 children, and all the interests that are naturally most dear 
 and close to us. So, the profession of ministers being 
 
78 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 what it is, there s been many a just reason, first and last, 
 why women should stand by them. Not that I would 
 say," continued the matron, as her young hearer still sat 
 silent, "not that I would say ministers, or even their 
 ways of thinking, are the only standard of goodness. I 
 know my own husband, who was as honest a man as ever 
 sailed the seas, what with roaming so over the world, 
 and seeing so many men and nations, I know he came 
 to take a very different view of many of the provisions 
 of the gospel from what I did ; but, though twas natural 
 to me to cleave to the old way of believing, I could see 
 that be was sincere and God-fearing in his way too. And 
 so I reckon the apostle s saying, How knowest thou, O 
 wife, but thou shalt save thy husband? may not mean 
 that she shall keep worrying him all the time to believe 
 just as she does, when maybe it isn t in the nature of his 
 mind to do so, especially in these days, when the founda 
 tions of every thing seem to be so questioned into and 
 shaken up. 
 
 " But there is one truth that will never be shaken, 
 Miss Monny ; and that is, there s an everlasting differ 
 ence between a bad life and a good one. And if women 
 couldn t rely on the virtue of men, as well as on their 
 strength and wisdom ; if we couldn t feel sure that a cer 
 tain proportion of them can be counted on to stand for 
 the right in managing all the world s large affairs, we 
 women could never feel at peace going about our more 
 private affairs, knowing well that we should suffer sooner 
 or later, and most helplessly, in all our quiet places, for 
 whatever bad and false doings went on abroad. So, if 
 good men- should be honored by mankind, they should 
 especially be by womankind," solemnty concluded the 
 widow. " And a girl like you, my dear, who I truly 
 believe have a reverent mind for whatever is good and 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 79 
 
 high, I could wish you would consider a little if you 
 haven t taken an unfair prejudice against Mr. Leigh 
 because he is an Episcopal minister." 
 
 u Oh ! I don t object to the Episcopal : indeed, I like the 
 Episcopal Church best of any church in the world, and 
 I almost always went to it when I was away at school. 
 Although at first," added the girl, wishing to be strictly 
 accurate in reporting her sentiments, "at first the order 
 for morning prayer seemed to me so long and circum 
 stantial, the end of Socrates little prayer used to come 
 into my head, 4 Do we need any thing else, Phaedrus? 
 for myself, I have prayed enough. 
 
 The Orthodox dame was not sure whether a little admo 
 nition was not needed here again ; but remembering that 
 Mouny s vivacity of impressions was quite removed from 
 levity of character, and feeling, moreover, almost equally 
 in the dark as to Episcopalian prayers and those of Soc 
 rates, she said nothing. And the maiden added seriously, 
 " But the whole I^piscopal service, besides being truly like 
 a religious worship, in having all the people join in it, is 
 so reverential and beautiful throughout, it would seem a 
 pity to cut any of it out for good ; only I should suppose 
 they might print the prayer-book, Then may be read the 
 first, second lesson, etc., instead of shall be; so that, 
 when the preacher had a particularly good sermon, he 
 could omit some of the service to give himself more 
 time Oh, how black the clouds are growing!" Monuy 
 broke off, probably realizing that her suggestions for the 
 improvement of the prayer-book had not much chance 
 of electing the next church council. 
 
 " Yes, the wind has been rising steady ever since noon. 
 1 shouldn t wonder if there was a great blow before mid 
 night." said the Cape-Cod woman. 
 
 " The rain will not come at present. I believe I want 
 
80 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 to run down to the beach, and see the surf," said Monny, 
 rising ; for on this Atlantic side of the Cape a very mod 
 erate wind rolled great waves on the shore. 
 
 "Take a warm shawl with you, dear, it will be chilly 
 on the beach, and come back and take tea nicely now 
 with Mr. Leigh, and you ll see he hadn t the least idea 
 of keeping your books," coaxed the matron, who, through 
 the humble but tender relation which her cousin had 
 held t > this fair girl s childhood, had come to regard her 
 as a kind of foster-child to herself, a brilliant young 
 creature whom she both looked up to and advised. 
 
 Monny, who was very easy to be entreated of affection, 
 and who had been sufficiently impressed by what Mrs. 
 Doane had said of Mr. Leigh a little to reconsider that 
 obnoxious man, went towards her room half sorry for 
 her answering back." 
 
 Yes, turning at the top of the staircase, she took a 
 sudden resolve to make so much of an apology to Mr. 
 Leigh as to go forthwith, and ask him with exceeding 
 polite amiability for her books. 
 
 So presently there was a low knock at the minister s 
 study-door by a hand that had never knocked there be 
 fore. Mr. Leigh opened it, to behold Miss Monny, 
 meekness round her red lips, but a glint of the rampa 
 geous Puritan ancestry in her eye, as she said in a voice 
 very low and sweet and obstinate, an accent inimitably 
 mixed of penitence and persistence, " I ll take my saints, 
 if you please." 
 
 The man mentally thrust my saints deeper down 
 into their hiding-place, took a renewed grip of the, Holy 
 Fathers, as the maiden turned slowly up to him her large 
 open gaze. Under the influence of Mrs. Doane s words 
 she was looking at him for the first time, as it were 
 this clerical lady-killer, who considered himself mortal at 
 
A REVEKEND IDOL. 81 
 
 sight. She was wondering if that conception of hers had 
 really done him injustice ; and, lost in this inquiry, she 
 did not at once take in the words of his reply : 
 
 "Iveally, Miss Rivers, I have put the books quite 
 away. I can make a much better selection for you of 
 the Catholic writers, if you wish to read them ; and I 
 shall be very happy to do so the next time I go up to 
 Boston. Meanwhile, if you are in want of reading, any 
 thing among such few books as I have here is at your 
 service. You are very welcome to come in whenever you 
 like, and take any of my books or papers that may please 
 you." 
 
 By this time Mr. Leigh s words had sensibly penetrated 
 to Monny s understanding, and what with their cool 
 assumption of authority over her, and yet some indefina 
 ble impression that came to her with that long, searching 
 look into the face of the speaker, that contradicted the 
 character she had always ascribed to him, and which his 
 present extraordinary proceeding certainly seemed to 
 justify, what with all these conflicting sensations, she 
 stood quite speechless ; then making a slow, profound 
 bow, still without a S3 llabie, she turned abruptly, and 
 retired to collect her wits. 
 
 She retired down-stairs to collect them with Mrs. 
 Doane, not staying even to prepare for her walk. Burst 
 ing into that bedroom again, she confounded Mr. Leigh s 
 advocate there by proving to her how entirely deliberate 
 and intentional his confiscating proceeding had been. 
 
 "He has put my books quite away, <juite! " mocked 
 Moniiy, but in a merry key, all her wrathful mood of a 
 few moments before seeming to have melted away in her 
 sense of the comicalities of the affair. tk He proposes to 
 make a square bundle of my property, and scud it back 
 to Boston." 
 
82 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 " Well, to be sure ! "exclaimed the astonished widow. 
 
 "Why, it is a larceny within the law, laughed the 
 girl. " I could have a sheriff to search the Rev. Apostoli 
 cal Succession s premises for stolen goods. And he would 
 stand up and look at that officer," continued Monny, 
 dimpling merrily as the imposing image of Mr. Leigh 
 denying her her books at his door vividly recurred to her, 
 "he would just stand up in all his feet and furlongs, 
 and look down at him, and say, still as a lamb and stiff- 
 willed as a lion, Really, Mr. Constable, I have put the 
 goods quite away. I have made a square bundle of the 
 plunder, which it doth not please me to untie. What is 
 the man anyway?" cried the girl, with an emphasis in 
 her voice and a wondering speculation in her eyes, which 
 showed that the minister at last really stirred her curi 
 osity. 
 
 Mrs. Doane, feeling that Monny had now some just 
 cause to be vexed with Mr. Leigh, was a little surprised 
 at the mood in which she took this last aggression of his ; 
 but she said nothing as the laughing maid, with a few 
 more jests in the same vein, ran up stairs again to equip 
 for her ramble to the beach. As the widow saw her pres 
 ently tripping away thither with Duke George, the good 
 soul communed with herself a little whether she had not 
 better go and inform the minister that Miss Rivers was a 
 highly learned and sensible young personage, who could 
 be perfectly trusted to read the most beguiling of Popish 
 books. She revolved this plan a few moments ; but feel 
 ing a decided mystification about this particular affair, 
 and a general uncertainty about Mr. Leigh s whole state 
 of mind towards her } T oung lady, she wisely concluded to 
 hold her. peace, and meddle not a word. 
 
 As for Monny, roaming off to the beach to find the 
 waves rising high under the darkening sky, the sea- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 83 
 
 birds wheeling and whirling already, as with the passion 
 of the coming tdfnpest throbbing under their wings, 
 such a fascination and a study was the sea to the gill s 
 artist soul at a time like this, on.ly the night and the in 
 stant threatening rain brought her blowing home, obliged 
 to race with the wind at last ; for the thunder was rolling 
 in long peals, and the big drops beginning to fall. IIow- 
 e^er, Duke George bounded on the porch, with his young 
 mistress close behind him, just as the floods descended ; 
 and the watching Mrs. Doaue drew the girl, breathless 
 but glowing, into the house. 
 
 44 The minister has just gone up-stairs since we saw 
 you coming," said the matron. kfc lle couldn t eat his 
 supper for worry iiig about you, and he was just coming 
 out to bring you home." 
 
 44 Supposing, of course, that I was that proverbial 
 person that doesn t know enough to come in when it 
 rains," panted Monny ; but even this reply was made not 
 quite in her old tone of flouting Mr. Leigh. In fact, 
 some impression from that long, serious look of hers into 
 his face, so remained to her, that as she sat down to the 
 tea-table, with Mrs. Doane sitting down again for com 
 pany, she made no reference to the affair of the books, 
 and chatted about every thing but the minister. 
 
 But when she went up-stairs to her studio, where Mrs. 
 Doane had kindled on the open hearth the first fire of the 
 season there, expecting Monny to come home drenched, 
 as she had done more than once after such rambles, as 
 the maiden sat down with a book before the bright blaze, 
 which the evening was chilly enough to make very pleas 
 ant, although she had escaped a wetting, a smile floated 
 over her -peaking face as she thought of the man who 
 had sequestrated the last addition to her libr iry, flashes 
 of merriment sobering into an expression of that thought- 
 
84 A KEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 fill, puzzled wonder which had come OT er her regarding 
 Mr. Leigh. There was a moment of*tlis revery, then, 
 opening her book, she was lost in its pages till bedtime. 
 Put again at that hour, as she ended her reading, and sat 
 idly pulling down her hair as she gazed into the dying 
 fire, in these dreamy moments the old smile dimp ed her 
 face again, and, giving an interrogatory poke :o the 
 paling embers, she murmured half aloud, "What is the 
 man anyway ? 
 
 Then Mrs. Doane coming in, candle in hand, as she 
 often came at this hour, to take a good-night look at 
 Monny, diverted the girl s thoughts to another channel. 
 
 "O aunt Persy! isn t this going to be a dreadful 
 night for the sailors? The waves were just boiling over 
 the bar three hours ago, and what a hurricane the wind 
 blows now ! " 
 
 u Yes, dear," said the widow, going round to put pegs 
 in the rattling window-sashes : " it s a hard blow, besides 
 all the driving rain, and thunder and lightning coming by 
 spells. But a sailor s eye could have seen this threaten 
 ing all day, though the sun has shone bright enough off 
 and on : so any vessels dangerously near the shore have 
 had time to run into harbor. Sailors know too well what 
 this coast is in a storm to risk driving on it : so I m not 
 so worried as in the gales that come up more sudden. 
 Though none can ever tell the chances of the sea," sighed 
 the widow ; for Capt. Azariah s ship had gone down of a 
 still night in mid-ocean, struck in the fog by an iceberg. 
 
 The girl to whom was no memory of either parent s 
 living face, for the deadly accident that had smitten her 
 young father in a moment from the earth, had always a 
 special sense of nearness to these mariner s homes, which 
 had most of them their tale to tell of the men who went 
 fo~th, and came back no more ; and she reached her hand 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 85 
 
 with a loving gesture to the matron, as the latter came 
 and sat down by her chair. Neither the widow, who luul 
 learned these long years now to live bravely and cheerfully 
 in what was left to her, nor the orphan, whose was that 
 pathetic loss which can never measure itself with posses 
 sion, save in fancy, neither the elder nor the younger 
 heart was given to morbid repinings ; but still there were 
 lonely chords in both which made them sit and talk with 
 peculiar sympathy on a night like this. And when the 
 girl s head was at last laid on her pillow, the wild wind, 
 and the fancies which it brought, still kept her waking. 
 Monny s power of sleep indeed, in spite of youth and 
 health, was wont, from the extreme sensitiveness of her 
 organization, to be very easily lost; and now, as the 
 hours deepened to midnight, and all the rest of the house 
 was wrapped in slumber, her senses grew only more pre- 
 ternaturally active with the fever of the blast. Then, 
 soon after the old clock in the entry down-stairs struck 
 twelve, a cloud still charged with electricity rolled up on 
 the wind, and a fresh thunder-shower, only not so severe 
 as the one at nightfall, added its tumult to the gale. 
 Somewhere between the long peals, the wakeful girl sud 
 denly started up at a new sound, which seemed scarce of 
 thunder, or wind, or rain, a sound like the faint, far 
 report of a gun. She listened with throbbing heart to 
 hear it again, said to herself that it was but the thunder, 
 and yet could not forget its peculiar echo. 
 
 The white heads of the furious waves, as she had seen 
 them on her walk, rushed on the darkness of her chamber 
 like spectres : she could not get over that haunting terror 
 of a ship in distress, and at last, rising up, she thrust her 
 feet into slippers, and, in a dressing-gown and shawl, 
 softly o^ned her door, resolved at least to go down and 
 speak to Mrs. Doane. A mysterious gust of wind Irom 
 
86 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 some quarter drawing the door violently from her hand, 
 and sending it to again with a resounding bang, Susan 
 nah, who slept in a back-chamber on this floor, woke up at 
 that noise within the house, more potent to disturb her 
 than any amount of thunder without ; and so, by the time 
 Monny was telling her fear in Mrs. Doane s bedroom 
 below, the black handmaid appeared on the scene to 
 know what was the matter. 
 
 Mrs. Doane, who was assuring Monny that she had 
 heard only the thunder, and endeavoring to persuade her 
 to share her room for the rest of the night, briefly ex 
 plained to Susannah, and sent her back to bed again, 
 adding, "And look to the garret-door, Susannah. The 
 catch is loose ; and it must have blown open to make the 
 draught that slammed Miss Monny s door, and it will be 
 swinging all night, and keep the minister awake maybe." 
 So Susannah went up to fasten the garret-door. But 
 meanwhile, with the various commotion, Mr. Leigh was 
 well awake, and called from his room to Susannah, as she 
 tinkered at the garret-door, to know if any one was ill. 
 
 " No, your Honor, nobody sick ; only Miss Monny she 
 git nervous, and tink she hear a gun from de sea, de 
 voice of a ship cast away, an cryin for help." 
 
 Yet a moment more, and the minister too sprang up, 
 and struck a light in a breath ; for faint, and broken by 
 the wind, but clearly to be distinguished from the artillery 
 of the skies, came again the dread sound that had started 
 Monny from her bed, indeed a gun from that midnight 
 raging sea, the voice of a ship cast away, and crying fot 
 help. 
 
A KEVEREND IDOL. 87 
 
 CHAFIER VI. 
 
 MR. LEIGH was out of the house in a very few 
 moments, snatching, as he went, the only rope 
 Mi s. Doane had at hand to give him ; and the three women 
 proceeded to dress more thoroughly. When Monny came 
 down, however, fully equipped in her waterproof cloak 
 for going forth, Mrs. Doane cried out in remonstrance. 
 
 u Why, of course I m going, aunt Persy!" said the 
 girl, pulling the hood of her cloak up over her head. 
 " You know there s but very few men at home in the 
 village at this time, and perhaps even women can help a 
 little." 
 
 "Dear child, if there were men enough to line the 
 shore, there s little the strongest of em could do to help, 
 if the vessel is where she seemed to be from her guns, 
 not very far up above us. Right off our beach here, it s 
 almost impossible, you know, to launch a boat, even in 
 fair weather, because of the breakers curving over so, 
 and filling a boat with water, or turning it bottom upwards, 
 before ever it can be got off ; and in a gale like this the 
 best lifeboat that ever was manned would be of no more 
 account than an egg-shell. No : if there s a vessel on the 
 bar, and she can t hold out till morning, till they can get 
 off to her with boats from farther up the shore, there s no 
 hope for them on board of her, except as some poor soul 
 may be washed ashore, and pulled in over the undertow 
 by flinging him a rope. There s always possible some 
 chance like that," said the widow, who all this time had 
 
88 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 been swiftly filling a basket with bottles and small pack 
 ages. " So I m going down with this basket to that little 
 house of Billy Hines, that s so near, the beach, you know. 
 They are poor folks, and won t have things to do with, 
 and there may be want of stimulants ; and Susannah will 
 stay with you." 
 
 44 O aunt Persy, Susannah wants to go too!" cried 
 Monny, as she saw the excited eyes of the black woman. 
 44 We all want to go, and help carry the basket. 
 
 44 There s some one at the door now! " exclaimed the 
 girl, and ran to open it. There she found Dick Hines, a 
 stout lad of sixteen, whom Mr. Leigh had met on the 
 way with tidings of the disaster, and had sent on to 
 Mrs. Doane for a coil of cable-rope that was in the old 
 sea-captain s attic. The boy, who was breathless with 
 running through the night storm, panted out what he knew 
 to Monny, while Mrs. Doane and Susannah brought down 
 the knotted pile of rope from the garret ; and as the girl 
 knelt on the floor, and helped disentangle the stout cable 
 with her deft fingers, the matron finally allowed Susannah 
 to put on her things, and the three women were to go. 
 Monny, however, could not wait for the lantern of the 
 other two ; and, calling Duke George, she ran away on 
 her young feet through the wild night, with the messenger 
 and the ropes, the thunder rolling distantly now, but its 
 accompanying flashes of lightning still showed at intervals 
 the road. 
 
 Far down the lane a man with a bright lantern came 
 running diagonally across the sand-hills, and joined them, 
 lifting his light, js Duke George s well-known bass growled 
 inquiry into the character of the new-comer, to disclose the 
 face of Skipper Brickctt, an old sailor whom Monny knew, 
 
 44 Lord bless you! be it you, Miss Rivers?" he ex 
 claimed, with that beaming loyalty with which men of 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 89 
 
 whatsoever degree were wont to salute fair Monny. 
 u You m going to see the wreck? Well now, if you ll 
 do me the honor to go right along with me. I ve got a 
 good ship s-light here ; " and Monny was glad to eling 
 tightly to the stout sailor s arm, as they came out now 
 on the sea-banks, where her very senses whirled with 
 the violence of the gale and the deafeping thunder of the 
 breakers. They kept their way on the bank : as for the 
 beach below, on which Monny often rambled, even at 
 high tide, it was wholly swallowed now by the great 
 waves ; and, drawn blindly on by her escort, she scarcely 
 raised her head, bowed before the driving rain and the 
 buffeting wind, blowing straight on shore, till, coming 
 over an unusual elevation of the undulating bank, she 
 was aware of other lanterns gathering, and dark moving 
 forms of men ; and the skipper suddenly held her tighter, 
 with, " Stand fast now, my young lady, and look off. 
 There she is ! " 
 
 Mouny looked off through the bewilderment of storm 
 and darkness, and that awful roar of the breakers, to see 
 what seemed a single, dimly lurid light, wildly plunging 
 and tossing in a world of inky blackness, haunted only by 
 an endless glimmer of white wraiths rushing tumultuous 
 it was the last light of the doomed ship. The vessel had 
 been driven sheer over the outer bars of the coast, to 
 strike on the inner one, where, aground, with the waves 
 beating it to pieces, it had fired the signals of distress 
 that Monny had heard on her pillow. But, wrenched off 
 now by the great rollers of water, it was driven, utterly 
 helpless, at their will, until, even as those on the shore 
 gazed, a mountainous wave first lifted the wreck on its 
 crest, then dashed it on the bar again to its last destruc 
 tion. Monny heard Capt. Brickett say, "Ther^ she 
 strikes ! " while as yet her eyes, spell-bound on the phan- 
 
90 A EEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 torn light, had scarce discerned any outline of the dark 
 mass moving with it, until suddenly a long bright glare of 
 lightning made clearer than day the whole awful scene, 
 
 The disabled hulk of a brig, with a chaos of broken 
 masts and tangled rigging ; a dozen men or more ; one 
 woman, with a child clasped to her breast, outlined against 
 her dark figure as she stood : the men had dropped their 
 axes, or whatever they had been striving to cut away all 
 that dragging ruin with, and float the broken shell of 
 their vessel a few moments longer : their attitude showed 
 that they knew the end had come ; and the lightning 
 flashed out, as if to make a spectacle of them a moment 
 ere their death. 
 
 Monny turned sick with horror. The distance between 
 these hapless victims and the land was so short, yet the 
 thundering surges that filled it were such as to beat the 
 life out of any swimmer s breast. Even Monny had been 
 enough by these waters to know that ; and the brief, deep 
 intonation with which the old sailor by her side, recogniz 
 ing the dismantled wreck in that great glare of light said, 
 " It s The Rattler ! " had in it no touch of hope. 
 
 u You d best come away from this, my young lady,* 
 he said, trying to lead off the shuddering girl ; but at that 
 moment Monny was aware of Mr. Leigh, who towered 
 head and shoulders above all the other men, of this 
 strong figure moving alert, intense. She paused to see 
 what his action meant, so unlike the blank despair of the 
 rest, as he dashed up to an old flagstaff that was on the 
 edge of the high sea-bank where all the group were stand 
 ing, having caught up Skipper Brickett s lantern, the 
 most powerful light which had been brought to the shore. 
 The minister snatched this lantern from the ground with 
 the intent to run it up the high pole. Skipper Biickett 
 with the rest of the little group stepped mechanically for- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 91 
 
 ward to aid ; and the flagstaff having an arrangement of 
 sliding cords, as it was still used for some local signalling 
 concerning the arrival of packets, the larlern was readily 
 swung up by the Cape-Cod men to such height as would 
 throw its beams farthest over the water. Evidently, 
 however, this operation was wholly at the will of Mr. 
 Leigh : plainly no other man saw any real purpose in cast- 
 Ing this faint ray over that hopeless abyss. 
 
 lie nevertheless, stretching far over the sea-bank, seemed 
 to study every foot of the waters by its light, and by those 
 intermittent flashes from the thunder-cloud, which still, 
 by seconds, made their ghastly revealing of the sinking 
 wreck. Every thing passed in seconds. Monny saw the 
 coil of rope that had come from Mrs. Doane s flash all 
 its length through Mr. Leigh s testing hand, as the men 
 helped him piece it out with other ropes. She could hear 
 no syllable for the thunder of the surge ; but apparently 
 he put to them some rapid questions concerning the mad 
 currents that he leaned over and watched so intently. But 
 when, springing up from the bank and throwing off coat 
 and waistcoat, he began to knot one end of the completed 
 line about his waist, the men, who had thus far seemed 
 magnetized to do his bidding, broke out in cries that 
 Monny drew nigh to hear : 
 
 "For God s sake, sir, what are you thinking to do? 
 There s no mortal man can go through that sea alive ! 
 There s more than one of us would be ready to swim off 
 to her with a line if there was the least chance ; but we 
 hnew, with the first sight of em there, they were all dead 
 men." 
 
 The minister seemed to hear nothing : he was trying tne 
 strength of the knot with which he had fastened the rope 
 about him ; and there was that in his movements which 
 made Skipper Brickett step quickly up to him with, 
 
92 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 "I tell you, sir, it s not for you to tLrow away youi 
 life for such as them fellows there ! It seems hard on 
 era to say it now in their extremity, and I wouldn t do 
 it if it wasn t for your rushing into death to save em ; 
 but they tempted just this fate that s come upon em. 
 It s The Rattler : I knew the craft the minute the light 
 ning showed her. They re a set of dare-devils, in the 
 carrying-trade from New Orleans. Spoke em out to sea 
 two or three days ago, and saw em again this noon, when 
 1 run into harbor myself, and come home by the cars. 
 They were either drunk or mad to risk this gale along 
 shore." 
 
 The minister answered not a syllable as all this was 
 poured rapidly forth : he had no time for words, watching 
 to snatch that fitful torch of the lightning to see how 
 those raging mountains of water rose and fell. And the 
 skipper, looking for a silent moment, as none could help 
 looking who saw, at the face and figure stretching far 
 over the surf in that wild leaping light, turned and took 
 noiselessly up the rope at a few yards distance. 
 
 The brave mariners of these Cape-Cod shores were no 
 respecters of persons when they plunged into the ocean, 
 whose perils they knew so well, to save the drowning. 
 But, when they saw no chance of saving, they could but 
 set the life of this man, who in the few weeks he had 
 been in the village had so won their homage, against that 
 of some careless, drunken wretches, and hold him back 
 from sharing their death as a too costly offering. 
 
 So quietly, as Skipper Briekett turned and signalled 
 them, the other men, too, laid hold of the line, forcibly to 
 restrain the minister, who, wheresoever he had learned to 
 splice ropes like a sailor, was yet a landsman, who, in pity 
 of the awful sight before them, had lost his reason. 
 
 Kenyon Leigh perceived nothing of these movements : 
 
A BEVEREND IDOL. 93 
 
 he *as too intent on what he had to do, for he had not 
 lost his reason. No : daring to the last limit of earthly 
 daring, there was yet this difference between a rash man 
 and a bmve one, that he had counted the chances, and 
 found one, against the ninety-nine, for him to reach the 
 wreck . He knew that he had at the very outset to leap 
 so far over into the breakers from the high bank as to clear 
 the undertow ; and the only possibility of achieving this 
 was to seize that greater wave which ever and anon camr 
 rolling in a little nearer than the rest, and go out on its 
 return. If he could accomplish this, then, for the perils 
 beyond, his power to hold his breath a little longer under 
 water than a slighter man, to struggle a little stronger 
 over it, was his chance, a fearfully dangerous one, but 
 still a chance, and he intended to take it. 
 
 All these things, so long in describing, were crowded 
 in the doing as thought and action crowd in such straits 
 of death ; and it was not until, seeing afar his oncoming 
 wave, he drew back with one swift, all-gathering glance, 
 for that rushing leap into the flood, that Mr. Leigh saw 
 those who grasped the line, and their purpose. More 
 thunderous than surge or sounding hurricane rose his 
 voice, the shout of a man who is trifled with in the one 
 possible moment when the impossible can be done, 
 " Let go the rope ! " And, as if literally stricken off by 
 that mighty will, every hand fell from it for an instant ; 
 and the next instant ah ! what was there to do but still 
 to let go the rope ? For with that Titanic rush and bound 
 he was gone he was battling with the. flood. It rolled 
 hmi under, but it cast him up again ; far the mountain- 
 wave whose crest he had caught swept him beyond the 
 undertow ; and, seeing this great escape, the men on the 
 bank threw themselves down, and with breathless watch 
 ing gave out the rope to the swimmer. The deep gulfs 
 
94 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 of the monstrous billows hid him, and the awful night ; 
 but when he went into it, beyond that faint, shifting 
 penumbra made by the high, wind-blown lantern, he was 
 alive, and struggling onward still, and in dead silence 
 they on the shore still gave out the rope. 
 
 For the girl who watched among them with dilating 
 eyes and panting breast, the question she had asked a 
 few hours before swallowed her whole being now : What 
 is the man ? y 
 
 Utterly superhuman he had seemed to her from the first 
 moment of his rushing up to the old flagstaff, not alone 
 in his great daring, but in that transcendent power to 
 sweep every faculty into service at once, whereby the 
 man of great brain who has any gifts for action can rise 
 superior in a moment to all experience, and " mighty 
 to save," she could only murmur in her hushed heart, 
 remembering every idle jest she had ever made on that 
 Herculean frame which could so second now the heroic 
 will. 
 
 Would it bear him through? Once, twice, the black 
 night into which he had passed was pierced for an instant 
 by those sharp lances from the thunder-cloud. The first 
 time, an awful dread froze every soul, for nothing was 
 to be seen but the white heads of the breakers in their 
 savage might; but the next " Tliey see him!" cried 
 the girl they see him ! For those human forms on 
 the perishing wreck were straining out over the sea in a 
 new attitude. Surely it was a living man they caught 
 sight of, bringing hope of life to them. The swift dark 
 ness fell again, the moments seemed ages, but at 
 last, at last, came some tightening thrill on the rope, 
 whereat the sailors on the bank sprang up with a shout ; 
 and a wild, wild shout had gone up ere this at the other 
 end of the line, for out of the floods they had drawn their 
 deliverer. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 95 
 
 Yea, head and shoulders above the rest, the watchers 
 on the bank could see him stand with those forms on the 
 shattered hulk, when the next lightning-glare revealed 
 them ; and swiftly enough they drew the slack line tense, 
 and made it fast to the high bank, whose height was an 
 advantage now, bringing the rope so far above the general 
 sweep of the waves, that the men who began to pull 
 themselves hand over hand all its length to the shore 
 were immersed only now and then, and by the mere tops 
 of the breakers, when they were well off from the wreck. 
 
 A desperate enough feat such a passage over that 
 wild gulf, through the whirling storm and darkness, and 
 anon the strangling rush of the waters would seem to 
 ordinary mortals ; but to sailors accustomed to stand on 
 nothing, and reef topsails in a gale, it was practicable : 
 the desperate question was whether the wreck, which waa 
 the only pier of that frail bridge in the boiling sea, would 
 hold out till they were all over, when among them was 
 a woman with a child, and one helpless man, " The 
 Rattler s" captain, who had been knocked down and 
 disabled by one of the falling masts of the vessel. 
 
 To improvise a car out of a box and pieces of rope, 
 that will draw human beings over such a chasm, has been 
 done before in shipwreck ; and such an achievement 
 would have seemed nothing now, after the miracle of 
 swimming the breakers, save for the fearful straitness 
 of the time, with every moment beating the death-knell 
 of the dissolving vessel ; while to work by, there was only 
 the dim light of the one or two shattered lanterns that 
 they had been able to restore. 
 
 But the sailors escaping over the rope brought with 
 them to the shore, attached to their persons, the lines to 
 draw such a machine by ; and, when it was got ready, the 
 poor woman on the wreck was naturally the first to be 
 
96 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 brought off. She was a Creole Spaniard whom the 
 American captain had taken to wife, and not having 
 the slightest doubt in her Catholic soul that the man who 
 had risen up, plainly divine, out of that impassable flood, 
 was the patron-saint to whom she had been praying in 
 her long agony of terror, with this faith, and her being 
 a lithe, active creature, wonted to rough ways, she man 
 aged, with her child lashed securely about her, so to aid 
 herself at any obstructions in the passage, that she was 
 safely pulled through, and drawn up the high bank by the 
 strong hands of the Cape-Cod men, drenched and gasp 
 ing, but still alive, with her child. 
 
 That young member of her sex who received her there, 
 blessed to have one being among these sufferers whose 
 neck she could properly fall on and cry, of course sobbed 
 over her, and hugged the baby, and stripped off her long 
 cloak to wrap the pair in, all in a breath. And the poor 
 woman, apparently taking the sympathetic girl for an 
 other messenger straight from the Queen of Heaven, 
 adjured her to see that il capitano was brought over in 
 safety, with which charge the half-fainting mother suf 
 fered herself, for the sake of her child, to be carried 
 away to the little house of the Hines family. 
 
 Susannah was very glad by this time to go away out 
 of the storm with this cortege; and her mistress had not 
 come beyond the little Hines house at all. So Monny 
 was now left alone on the bank with the men, kneeling 
 on its edge, straining her eyes to see into that black 
 night, where the desperate struggle for life still went 
 on. Desperate indeed it was growing to the three men. 
 all that were left now on the wreck ; viz., Mr. Leigh, the 
 disabled captain, and a single sailor, a young Portuguese. 
 All the rest had escaped over the rope while the prepara 
 tions went on to carry over the helpless ones. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 97 
 
 How the last of these men came, bringing word that 
 the captain was got ready, and that the lines must be 
 drawn in with all speed, as the wreck was half under 
 water, and could give a foothold but a few moments 
 more; how, drawing in those lines, there came, when but 
 half their length was in, some obstruction, a dead lock 
 out there in the darkness which no eye could pierce, the 
 Juifcning roar of the surge through which no voice could 
 call ; how there were moments of dread waiting, and then 
 a gi?at vibration, a sudden dragging fall of the rope. 
 whereat the men who held it sprang up, and begun draw 
 ing it in the very bridge, how these things passed 
 Monny knew not: a terror more ghastly than had been 
 before in this terrible night seemed to suspend her very 
 breath. 
 
 It was indeed the acme of its perils. The two men on 
 the other side could half see and guess the rest of what 
 had happened; viz., that a great wave, the rope-bridge 
 swaying always lower with the sinking wreck, had so 
 whirled and tossed the rude car in which they had bound 
 the disabled captain, as to entangle hopelessly the lines ; 
 while, still worse, the swooning, l&lf-drowned man was 
 clutching them fast in his convulsive stupor. In this ap 
 palling strait, with the last planks going beneath their feet, 
 there was nothing to do but for both the remaining men to 
 climb out at once by the rope as far as might be, and then 
 cut it away behind them, trusting to be hauled in through 
 the breakers. 
 
 The one sailor left by his side being a small, agile man, 
 Mr. Leigh sent him on in advance ; then, the rope sway 
 ing so low now, that his own weight was chiefly sustained 
 by the waters, he climbed out to where the helpless body 
 of the captain swung, and, grasping the rope with one iron 
 hand, cut it away with the other, and the three men were 
 in the sea 
 
98 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 In the annihilating rush that came then through the 
 waters, Mr. Leigh, at least, had power to remember that 
 the weight now on the rope would fearfully overstrain it 
 when the three of them came to be drawn up the high 
 bank ; and drawn they all must be, because of that fatal 
 current of the shore made by the undertow, against which 
 the strongest swimmer could avail nothing, but would be 
 swept along in a line with the shore, unable to make an 
 inch towards it. 
 
 Knowing well these perils, Mr. Leigh decided to lighten 
 the over- weighted line by throwing himself off it when 
 it was drawn close in, and trust for his own life to the 
 chance of seizing some fresh rope that might be thrown 
 out to him from the bank. Such a chance, indeed, saved 
 him ; for, all the time the sailors had been crawling over 
 the line from the wreck, the watchful mariners on the bank 
 had held ready to throw out, in case any of them should 
 be washed off by the breakers in their transit, a rope with 
 an iron so attached to its end that it could be aimed with 
 precision. So now, in these last dread moments, which 
 might bring forth none knew what, Skipper Brickett 
 stood waiting with tnis barbed rope ; and, discerning the 
 heads of the struggling men as they came within the 
 faint circle of light that rayed from the shore, he hurled 
 it with such skill Mr. Leigh soon laid hold of it, and, 
 drawn safely through the surf, he was on the bank even 
 before the other rope was in. 
 
 The men whom he had saved fell at his feet. As for 
 Monny, as soon as she knew that Mr. Leigh was verily 
 brought alive again out of the deep, she kept aloof, 
 hanging over the rope by which those other lives were 
 suspended. Thus it chanced that as the poor young Por 
 tuguese (not skilled as Mr. Leigh was in holding his breath 
 under water) was drawn, a perfectly helpless and appai 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 99 
 
 ently drowmxl man, up the bank, and the tangle of ropea 
 and hoards by which the other insensible being swung came 
 but slowly up the high cliff, Monny, woman-like, forget 
 ting herself and her own footing, as she reached down her 
 insufficient young arms in a wild impulse to help, lost her 
 balance, and, slipping on the crumbling sand, would have 
 gone headlong over the cliff into the breakers but for two 
 or three hands that caught her back. 
 
 Mr. Leigh s was among them, and as he set her on her 
 feet he fairly shook her. 
 
 "That ever a rational being should run such senseless 
 risks!" he said, transporting her, as if she had been a 
 kitten, several yards back from her dangerous position. 
 
 "I wanted to do something," gasped Mouny, in the 
 grasp of Hercules, which was sufficiently vigorous to 
 suggest to the girl that he was good for a dozen ship 
 wrecks more on the spot. 
 
 " Do what you can do, then ! " he answered, in only a 
 lower note of that tone in which he had cried erewhile on 
 the shore, " Let go the rope ! " " Go home this moment, 
 put on dry clothing, and see if you can get these poor 
 people something to eat." 
 
 The stringent vehemence with which he spoke was only 
 the involuntary vibration in the man of the tremendous 
 shock that the sight of Monny tumbling over the cliff had 
 caused him. He had not been really aware of her presence 
 at all until that instant ; and the perceiving how drenched 
 and shivering was this delicate, girlish frame, all un 
 cloaked as Monny was now in the storm, thrilled him 
 with some apprehension that all the mortal exposures of 
 this night had scarcely stirred before. Thus to send her 
 tvdere her sympathies could be expended with safety to 
 herself, and some practical benefit to the sufferers, was 
 his only thought ; but in this strongly-moved moment it 
 
100 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 found expression in a style which certainly savored, as no 
 word of his to Miss Monuy had ever done before, of the 
 " domineering." 
 
 But meeker than ever was Moses, for Moses had not 
 been a light-tongued girl making fun of a great man as a 
 paltry one, and brought to repentance by such a night 
 as this, the maiden heard and obeyed : yea, as Mr. Leigh 
 turned to examine the insensible men whom they were 
 preparing to carry away, Monny paused only for a word 
 of inquiry about them, then, softly calling her dog, she 
 ran through the gale and the darkness for the Ilines 
 house. Panting enough, she arrived there, but stopped 
 merely to call Susannah to the door, and tell her, for the 
 poor wife s sake, that they were bringing the captain 
 straight on to the house, and that they did not know but 
 he might be still alive. Then, taking her cloak, she went 
 straight on for home ; Mrs. Doane, who supposed that 
 some of the villagers were along with her, being very 
 glad to have her return at once to the shelter of her own 
 roof. 
 
 All alone, however, with Duke George, Monny ran 
 swiftly up the long, pitch-black lane, in the small hours 
 of the night, in her desperate eagerness to reach what she 
 had so longed to find in the last hour of looking help 
 lessly on at masculine power and skill; viz., woman s 
 opportunity to be a little useful. That, it seemed, was 
 still at home, cooking victuals, to be sure. Instead of 
 hanging over that wild sea, every throb of her heart 
 g training with the strain of those struggling lives, where 
 gliould she have been the last hour? Industriously put 
 ting the kettle on for tea. 
 
 Well, the convicted Monny ran for her sphere now with 
 might and main: how she shone in it will be seen in 
 another chapter. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 301 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IT must be confessed that Miss Monny Rivers waa 
 not prepared to shine in the kitchen department of 
 woman s sphere by any previous practice. In the sewing 
 department she was very excellently accomplished, having 
 been in the habit of teaching poor girls how to cut and 
 make their own dresses by patterns. But although she had 
 learned that it was desirable for all women, of whatever 
 station, to have skill with the needle, she had never made 
 the same discovery with reference to the culinary art. 
 
 Her aunt Helen was a lady whom cooks never deserted 
 in a huff. The apparently un forcible Mrs. Slab well yet 
 kept an American domestic establishment, with the usual 
 Milesian retinue of servants, rolling on the softest and 
 smoothest of wheels year in and year out : so it had never 
 occurred to Miss Monny that break-downs in the kitchen, 
 requiring the mistress personally to officiate there, were 
 among the contingencies of life. In short, the present 
 contingency was the first time in Monny s mortal exist 
 ence that she had been summoned to produce something 
 to eat " on her sole responsibility. 
 
 True, she had once attended a lecture by Professor 
 Hlot, aunt Helen having bought a ticket to the course as 
 one of her social duties. On that occasion of privilege, 
 as Mouny remembered now with remorse, after she had 
 dutifully minded the composition of three varieties of 
 syllabub, the procession of ladies solemnly filing up to 
 the professor with their individual spoons for tasting, so 
 
102 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 tickled her fancy, that she spent the rest of the houi draw 
 ing a caricature of the same. She could have wept now, 
 recalling this levity. But at least, she said to herself, as 
 she ran splashing through mud and water, she could ran 
 sack the larder, and set forth its cold provisions in order. 
 And for hot provisions, certainly the first preliminary 
 would be a fire ; and, consoled by remembrance of the (.id 
 proverb that it took a fool to make a fire, she arrived at 
 the dark house, and rushed for her chamber. There she 
 changed her wet garments with more care for herself than 
 she might have staid to take but for fear, that, if she 
 should even sneeze on the morrow, a certain man would 
 regard her as a troublesome imbecile, who ran senseless 
 risks (the risks of men were taken to some purpose) ; then 
 plunging down to the kitchen she attacked that new 
 cooking-range of special memory. The new stove was 
 insanely rich in modern improvements ; and, in spite of 
 the proverb, getting a locomotive in running order would 
 not have looked much more formidable to Monny than the 
 firing-up of this engine, stuffed, as the grate was at this 
 hour of the night, with dying coals, too dead to be re 
 vived into burning again, yet decidedly too alive in their 
 deceitful grayness to be plucked out by the maiden s bare 
 fingers ; which tender implements, in the impotence of 
 shovels, and the wild impossibility of discovering the 
 peculiar yank of the dumper, the neopyhte stoker at first 
 tit tempted to thrust into the heap. A considerably wise 
 fool, indeed, was required to make a fire in this machine ; 
 for when by dint of iron spoons, pewter skimmers, egg- 
 beaters, all the tinware in the pantry that would scoop 
 (the bowls of the pewter implements pleasantly melting 
 off with the heat of the cinders, and leaving Monny dig 
 ging away with the handle), when by these sacrifices, 
 and the indispensable fingers wound in wet woollen, rags 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 103 
 
 and making dexterous dives all the while, the mountain of 
 hot embers was at last triumphantly cast out independent 
 of dumpers, and the empty grate joyfully crammed with 
 kindlings, then began the snarl of dampers, seen and 
 unseen, which bewitched the thing before, behind, anA on 
 all sides. 
 
 To know how to open and shut these attachments, what 
 was the effect of their opening or shutting, and when they 
 wei? open or shut, this riddle might have been longer 
 ic the solving, but that the hurricane of wind which was 
 blowing at present pronounced on these points with such 
 staccato of belching smoke or roaring flame, that Monny 
 only strangled a few times, and singed off some front 
 locks of her hair, before she had all the stops of her new 
 instrument drawn out, and kindling-wood, charcoal, and 
 the solid anthracite itself, going at full blast. In the 
 latter stages of this combustion she had flown about and 
 cleared the kitchen of ash-pans, and wrecks of tinware 
 (she proposed to pay for her damages), made clean her 
 fair begrimed hands with soap and water, filled high the 
 teakettle, and begun to set the table, and still Duke 
 George was her sole companion. No feet yet came on 
 the doorstone. Having an impression that the masculine 
 digestion would survive, even after shipwreck, in some of 
 its native contempt for cakes, Monny had examined wist 
 fully the only supply of meats which the small family luul 
 on hand in this warm season ; viz., a pound or so of beef 
 steak, and a pair of chickens. She was gazing into the 
 refrigerator at these provisions, especially at the chickens, 
 which seemed to be in some mysterious state, not exactly 
 taw, yet not ready for the table : she was desperately 
 wishing that she knew how to get them ready, when there 
 was a noise of men arriving at the house-door, and directly 
 the welcome Susannah bounced into the kitchen. 
 
104 A REVEREND IDOL 
 
 " Sakes alive, honey ! Hev you got such a blessed fire 
 as dis yer agoiii all by yerself ? And all the nasty ashes 
 how ever did you know how to dump him? " 
 
 44 Are they alive?" asked Monny, appearing from the 
 pantry, thinking first of those two corpse-like figures that 
 she had seen lifted out of the deep. 
 
 44 Jess what we ve been doin so long, tryin to see if 
 they was clean done gone forever. De young one, de 
 little furriner, he come to pretty soon: he was mostly 
 stunned, an he d swallered some ob de sea ; but dey roll 
 him, an rub him, an he come to an speak. But he s 
 powerful weak, an he s got to stay to de Hines s. And 
 de cap n dey work over him all de time ; an missis she 
 rub him, and give him hot tings, an at las he breve jess 
 a little. He dunno nuthin , an he s got bones broke; 
 but he breve : so mebbe he ll pull troo, after all. An 
 de doctor s dere now : so missis is comin home berry 
 soon, an his Honor, who is one mighty angel ob de Lord, 
 sure, an de winds an de sea obey him!" .All which 
 Susannah poured out in a breath, as she was getting off 
 her wet outer garments and over-shoes, and lighting a 
 lamp. 
 
 44 An his Honor told me to put de men right up into his 
 room to change em. Dere s tree of em come along wid 
 me, an waitin now in dere soppin close in de entry ; an 
 dere s morea-comin wid his Honor : so, seeiu y m ve got 
 tings a-goin so bright an shiiiin here, I ll jess fly right 
 round up-stairs, an get dere dry close de fus ting ; Missis 
 tole me where to find cm. " With which discharge of words 
 the handmaid vanished ; Monny, feeling that she must not 
 detain her an instant now, reserving her questions about 
 supper till she should re-appear. But Susannah was long 
 gone : in fact, one of the sailors, another youth of about 
 twenty, less robust than the older men who made most of 
 
A KI:VI:UI:ND IDOL. 105 
 
 the crew, fell in a fainting-fit, soon after he was got up 
 stairs, followed by violent chills and nausea; so that with 
 the cure of getting this patient to bed, and hunting up 
 clothing for the others, Susannah was quite takpn up for 
 the present. 
 
 Meanwhile there was a general arrival at the house of 
 Mrs. Doane, Mr. Leigh and six more of the shipwrecked 
 men to stay there ; this house being nearer the scene of 
 tue disaster than any other, except that little cabin oc 
 cupied by the Hines family, which was more than full 
 with the two men who could not be moved, and the poor 
 woman who was the wife of one of them. Also they 
 had brought the baby in this company, to relieve the ex 
 hausted mother of its care while she watched her husband 
 hovering between life and death ; and when the bed-quill 
 in which it had been wrapped to bring it again through 
 the storm was unwound by the kitchen-fire, disclosing a 
 plump little girl about a year and a half old, with black 
 eyes shining like buttons, and when Monny had brought 
 one of her little cashmere morning-jackets, and improvised 
 a tunic for the darling, in addition to such dry garments 
 as the Hines family had been able to reclothe it in, the 
 small shipwrecked was in much more comfortable case 
 than it had been any time before that night. 
 
 Nevertheless, when it had taken slow and solemn survey 
 of the new premises, with its black eyes growing bigger 
 and blacker every moment, it began to cry aloud with fear. 
 Its wondering baby-soul may have stood still through 
 ( ither awe or attention during the various cracks of doom 
 through which it had passed : it had certainly eudmvd 
 bt ing dragged, head downward, through thunder and sea, 
 ani all the other terrors of the night, with comparative 
 quiet; but, now that it was entirely safe and sound, the 
 poor liitlc daughter of Eve considered that it was time 
 to have an attack of nerves. 
 
106 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Mrs. Doane perceiving, through whatever nice learning 
 in infant shrieks, that the much-tried baby was in a fever 
 of fright rather than in any physical distress, and being 
 imperatively needed up-stairs as well as Susannah, left 
 the screaming child entirely to Monny s devices. Tht 
 tenderest of these were wholly unavailing to pacify it. The 
 fair face of the new nurse was regarded, to be sure, with 
 a moment s toleration by the wondering black eyes, then, 
 happening to remember that it was not the order of beaut} 
 that it was accustomed to, the lost baby yelled in Spanish 
 with madder outcry than ever. 
 
 M onny was distractedly tugging the kicking infant up 
 and down the room, feeling quite ready to cry herself, 
 when a pair of strong arms were reached suddenly ovci 
 her head, and Mr. Leigh, who had just emerged from his 
 room, dry clothed, strode off with the little howler. The 
 miraculous thing was, that it ceased to howl immediately, 
 a miracle which the discarded nurse beheld, through all 
 her relief on the baby s account, with some mysterious 
 touch of disturbance on her own. Apparently the ma 
 gician took no very laborious pains. With the baby on one 
 arm, only saying to it now and then some merry, coaxing 
 word, he was all over the house, in the darkness or the 
 light, as he went from one room to another, looking after 
 the men ; yet that restored infant purred confidingly away 
 on his shoulder, plucked delightedly at his whiskers, drank 
 peacefully out of the porringer which he held to its lips, 
 that identical porringer which it had madly dashed out of 
 Monny s hand when she wooed it to imbibe just such 
 another milk-and-sugared mixture as it drained the dish 
 of now, and then went to sleep, with its small Catholic 
 n >se buried in the heretic minister s coat-sleeve (the child 
 was a girl, and probably accepted the heretic for the sake 
 of the minister, the child was a girl). The minister, 
 
A KI:VI:IM:ND IDOL. 107 
 
 to be sure, after administering the porringer, did take two 
 or three quiet turns up and down the front sitting-room, 
 empty just tiien, stroking the bewildered little head that 
 had been through so much, till it sank off unconscious, tc 
 be pillowed, sound asleep for the rest of the night, in Mrs. 
 Doane s bedroom. But had not she, Monny, stroked its 
 head, and with much affection? and it had only boui.ced 
 the more. 
 
 The young woman who saw herself thus vanquished in 
 the supreme feminine office of baby-tending by a man 
 surveyed his doings only furtively and from afar, being 
 extremely busy the while in enlarging the table accom 
 modations, etc. For being the most unsuitable person in 
 the house to be running about among men more or less 
 deshabille, bringing them fresh changes of clothing, 
 Monny s labors were still confined below stairs, where 
 as yet she had no assistant. Susannah, indeed, sup 
 posing, after the young lady s exploit with the range, 
 that she was equal to any thing, called to her down the 
 back stairs, just as the minister was disposing of his 
 baby, to say, 
 
 44 Miss Monny, dere s some ob de men might begin to 
 hab dere supper now, if you d jess clap dat ar beefsteak 
 right on de coals, and let it go fur as twill, an I ll be 
 down in a minute an knock up somethin else for de rest. 
 De gridiron is in de pantry. You jess take de tops ob de 
 stove clean off, an clap him right on de coals. Turn him 
 fus one side an* den todder, you know: dat s all." 
 According to which bulletin of instructions Monny flew 
 for the gridiron, cast down as to her failure with tht 
 baby, but lifted up as to her triumphant success with 
 the fire. For the patent range, with all the stops out, was 
 by this time a red-hot furnace, alas ! too fiery a furnace ; 
 for the steak, " clapped right on de coals," was burnt 
 
108 A RETEREND IDOL 
 
 to blackness before ever the amateur cook supposed i 
 time to make the first turn of the gridiron. "Oh, I 
 didn t know there was such a power in fire!" moaned 
 Monny, as, turning up the gridiron, she beheld her broil 
 ing. But there was no more steak in the house ; and 
 heroically serving with the burnt side upward, that no 
 body might be snared by her cooking unawares, she 
 carried the platter to the table, where Mr. Leigh was 
 just seating three or four of the men. Rather more 
 hopefully she brought in her tea and coffee ; for she had 
 made a cup of tea some moments before for the sick man 
 up-stairs, according to another bulletin of directions shot 
 down the back staircase by Susannah ; and, as Monny 
 could follow directions accurately, her tea had been pro 
 nounced "f us-rate" by the critical Susannah. So she 
 had joyfully proceeded to make not only a large potful 
 of tea, but one of coffee ; making the latter by exactly 
 the same rule which Susannah had imparted for the tea ; 
 viz., "A small teaspoonful to a pusson," pouring on 
 boiling water, and setting the pot in a merely warm place, 
 to "draw." 
 
 If Monny had been a drinker of tea and coffee herself, 
 she might have had a grain more intuition about the mak 
 ing of these beverages ; but she drank neither. She had, 
 however, a floating impression that coffee had some dis 
 tinctive need of being settled, and that eggs were used 
 in the process, yes, she remembered just now Kitty 
 Ellison picnicking with Mr. Arburton, in "A Chance 
 Acquaintance." 
 
 Mr. Arburton saw her break the egg upon the edge 
 of the coffee-pot, and let it drop therein, and then, with 
 a charming frenzy, stir it round and round." Blessing 
 the instructive reminiscence, she repeated this passage 
 now to herself, as if it had been a recipe, and supposing, 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 109 
 
 of course, that the settling operation must be the last 
 business before carrying the coffee to the table, she broke 
 her egg, stirring it violently in with a long-handled spoon, 
 scalding her much-enduring hands with the hot -splashes, 
 then rushing for the table to pour out the delicious slops 
 (every sailor of them had declared for coffee instead of 
 tea) before the virtue of the stirring should expire. 
 
 Alas, again ! and alas ! The clear amber tream that 
 was wont to pour from aunt Helen s and Mrs. Doane s 
 breakfast urns was sufficiently removed, even to the eye, 
 from the weakly muddy tide that Monny s coffee-pot dis 
 charged, for the mortified cook to perceive her failure, as 
 did also the watchful Mr. Leigh, who took the vessel 
 from the girl s trembling hand, ostensibly to relieve her 
 of its weight, but really to set the whirling fluid down 
 to recover itself after its "settling," Monny, meanwhile, 
 hearing that "Do what you can do" thundering in her 
 ears with quite awful echo. 
 
 Certainly, however, there was no thunder, nothing in 
 the least awful, in Mr. Leigh s present manner. He was 
 carving that steak as if it were so delicious, that, smitten 
 himself with a sudden and vast appetite, he must needs 
 divide unto his own plate all the most beautifully charred 
 portions thereof ; then, when Monny was looking the 
 other way, or when he supposed she was, he so adroitly 
 pared the rest as really to extract some quite tolerable 
 morsels for the sailors. Just now, moreover, Susannah 
 made a providential transit through the dining-room witn 
 a mammoth coffee-pot in hand, whose contents she had 
 been distributing up stairs, having herself snatched some 
 unknown moment to brew the same when Monny was 
 absorbed with the screaming baby. Mr. Leigh, having 
 eyes everywhere at present, arrested the handmaid, sug 
 gesting, with an artful plausibility that was rather a new 
 
110 A EEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 growth in his character, that she fill the sailors cups 
 with the remains of her coffee, as perhaps the coffee-pot 
 on the table was a little cooled, and had best go back to 
 the fire. By these inventions the famished mariners did 
 not go quite hungry, it will be seen. As for Mr. Leigh, 
 pouring out unto himself enormous libations of Monny s 
 successful tea (he had a marked preference for coffee), 
 he washed down therewith his plate of bitter cinders 
 without a grimace. 
 
 None of these specious proceedings deceived, however, 
 the young waitress on the table, who rushed into the 
 kitchen the second Susannah had set foot there, to seize 
 from her hand that decoction of egg-water tinctured with 
 coffee-grains which had "cooled," dash it out of doors, 
 and return the empty coffee-pot to the black woman, who 
 seemed to Monny at that moment the perfect ideal of her 
 sex, with, " Make some more coffee ; and let me see you 
 do it, every inch." 
 
 "Bless you, honey! mos likely you didn t make him 
 strong enough," responded the expert, pouring in the 
 Java by the teacupful, instead of poor Monny s little 
 teaspoon measures. " Men always want a great deal 
 more power in dere vittles an drink dan women. Jess 
 bring me a egg to clear him dere so you break him 
 in, shell and all, de fus ting; " and Mouny, beholding, 
 saw at which end of the process of coffee-making Kitty 
 Ellison stirred in the egg with that charming frenzy. 
 " Now I pour on de hot water," continued the illustrate r, 
 " when de teakettle don t fairly bile, but only kin >si tlz^ 
 \ ers, an den I set de pot jess where he ll bile deep an* 
 steady, but still, as you may say, softly, bout ten, fifteen 
 m limits, - ten minnits ll do for now, an by dat time 
 de rest ob de men ll be down for dere supper, an den, 
 ef I ain t here, you take him off an pour in jess a little 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. Ill 
 
 cold water to settle him fore you carry him to table mild 
 and lubly so as not to rile him a grain." And Susannah 
 was back in the diuiug-room before these words had well 
 left her lips, taking a comprehensive look at the tablo, 
 then saying in Mr. Leigh s ear, 
 
 " Your Honor, dere s a pair of parbiled chickens in de 
 fridgrator dal I can make a hot stew of in no time ; but 
 I se got to fly round fus up stairs along o some trousers 
 an tings dat s jess been sent from de village to help nx 
 out de men." 
 
 44 Well, if you will give me the chickens, I think I can 
 manage the stew," said Mr. Leigh in the need there was 
 for hastening supper, and being informed by Susannah 
 that he could not officiate just then about " de trousers 
 an tings." 
 
 Monny did not hear this dialogue, as she was bringing 
 a fresh plate of bread from the pantry ; but she noted how 
 Mr. Leigh rose up, and went into the kitchen with Susan 
 nah, then, presently hearing that heavy-footed handmaid 
 travelling up the back stairs again, she a little wondered 
 what Mr. Leigh was up to in the kitchen all by himself. 
 So, stepping in range of the open doors, she looked out 
 to see, and, by the stars above, if he wasn t making ready 
 that stew-pot with all the savoir faire of a first-class 
 hotel cook ! 
 
 Dismembering in the twinkling of an eye those for 
 midable animals that she had not dared to meddle with, 
 stowing them snug in the kettle, pouring in some myste 
 rious jellied gravy out of a dish, sprinkling away with 
 dredging-boxes, Monny s cheeks, which were vivid 
 enough before with all that she had been through, began 
 to burn like pomegranate-blossoms at the sight. Here 
 was a royal Alfred who would have minded the peasant- 
 woman s cakes, and not burnt them. Monny had an in- 
 
112 A EEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 tense respect for capacity, and some inward sense that 
 she was herself apt and willing to learn, and did not 
 rightly belong among the blunderers, and, through all the 
 awe with which she had bowed before the hero who had 
 conquered the death-raging flood, there began to stir in 
 her now, some instinct of her own personality not to be 
 utterly abased and abolished, a passionate inquiry as to 
 why this potent masculinity was equal to all things, small 
 and great, and she to nothing. Was the secret in some 
 quality of nature, or of training whereof she had been 
 highly defrauded? asked the girl, as she watched his 
 Serenity setting the pot over the fire. Then suddenly, as 
 one who arraigned the universe to know why her attain 
 ments were knowledge of syllabub in three kinds, while 
 he was solidly furnished to the occasion, whatever it 
 was,* she made an indignant dive at the man, demanding, 
 " Where did you learn to do chicken-stews? " 
 
 The royal Alfred turned at this onset, to behold the 
 pomegranate cheeks, the eyes blazing like two stars, 
 and made leisurely answer, Well, I think I came by 
 this accomplishment (knowing poke of a drumstick under 
 water) in rather disorderly ways, not to be recommended 
 to young ladies (scientific shake of the dredger). Sur 
 rcptitious suppers with my mates when I was a boy awa; 
 at school, fowls roasted in the small hours of the nigb 
 over fire-grates not especially designed for cookery (sag? 
 cious adding of a little more hot water to the stew) , - - 
 these furnished my first practice, I believe, in this art, 
 perfected afterwards by some camping-out experiences 
 with my brothers in college vacations, when our servant 
 fell ill," continued Mr. Leigh, rather lingering over these 
 explanations, noting what a picture Monny made the 
 while. It was not the mere scarlet of her cheeks, and 
 the white of her forehead, and the tossed glory >f her 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 113 
 
 hair, but the rueful, half-defiant, passionately in-earnest air 
 with which she spoke, and listened, only half appeased, to 
 his words of reply, then silently turned, and slowly with 
 drew to the dining-room, her head flung back over her 
 curved shoulder, her eyes dwelling on that supper-kettle, 
 as if it contained some problem of destiny. Mr. Leigh 
 watched this receding vision with a musing smile, think 
 ing what a beautiful, wilful, mysteriously charming child 
 it was. He thought this for a moment, perhaps it was a 
 long moment ; but then, for charming children were as 
 yet not quite ascendent over his permanent mood, his face 
 grew abstract with graver musings as he waited at his 
 novel post : he was thinking of the men in the other 
 room, how the very sea had cast up to him the old 
 problems. 
 
 The shipwrecked crew, most of them of Anglo-Saxon 
 speech and blood, were all gathering there now, in the 
 dining-room, which was the largest room in the house, it 
 having been the kitchen of the original square dwelling, 
 since built out in indefinite extension in the rear. This 
 now central room still retained its huge old-fashioned lire- 
 place, on v.-hose hearth Mouny had bethought herself to 
 kimlle a bright blaze, round which the sailors instinctively 
 drew as they came iu. 
 
 Skipper IJrickett had not named amiss these depraved 
 seamen, who half in drink, and wholly reckless, had 
 dared needlessly, and with a woman and child on board, 
 a gale off a highly dangerous coast. Monny, who had 
 seen merely rough sailors before, had never seen such 
 faces is came into view around this hearth-lire : the New- 
 York minister had seen oh, how many of them ! 
 
 As he came presently in among them now (Susannah 
 having finally appeared to serve up the stew, and wait on 
 the table), the girl, whose last impulsive ebullition* had 
 
114 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 subsided, to leave her again keenly watchful of Mr. Leigh, 
 grew aware of some mystery of power in him far rarer 
 than aught which the night had before revealed of hia 
 character. 
 
 They are, to begin with, the very rarest of beings, for 
 all our democracies and philanthropies and soul-saving, 
 who can ever meet those below them by any deep social 
 chasm with an absolute simplicity. The straits of mere 
 physical danger, it is true, make all flesh one ; but many 
 a gentleman who will go gallantly and nobly into fire or 
 flood to save a^ beggar s life at peril of his own is honestly 
 embarrassed, the moment he gets him out, to know how 
 to strike a sufficiently common chord of feeling with the 
 poor man to enable him even to express comfortably to 
 him his thanks. There was no such difficulty with Keuyon 
 Leigh, for all thanks to him were instinctively hushed by 
 the perception that he shrank from personal praise with 
 some self- withdrawal that was even bashful ; so that one 
 could quite imagine, seeing him among men who owed 
 him their lives, the blushing, excessively diffident boy 
 that this hero had once been. 
 
 Probably, by the way, to the make-up of heroes of 
 the most genuine kind, there goes, much oftener than the 
 superficial observer would fancy, that intense sensibility 
 which is one of the roots of shyness. At all events, the 
 present remains of this temperamental trait in Kenyon 
 Leigh had some indescribably winning charm in a man 
 of a type that is wont to have a certain necessity to 
 dominate, that touch of the aggressive, egotistic, which 
 we have almost come to expect as the inevitable alloy in 
 men of great abilities, and positive, passionate convic 
 tions. Some living force of these, only the more effective 
 for his peculiar personal modesty, yet went with him 
 everywhere ; and it was a significant thing that a man 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 115 
 
 who made this supreme impression of charact^c. should 
 have been nowhere more magnetic than among the most 
 utterly fallen and degraded of beings. What is often 
 called the " magnetic" man is wont to have it as his 
 prime characteristic, not to exalt, but to lower, all stand 
 ards : such would-be leader, not merely of the degraded, 
 l. ut of what are only termed the " vulgar " masses of men. 
 is apt to take their tone, to hide whatever privileges 
 he has had of learning better things in a vulgarity more 
 essentially vulgar than that of the simple ever is or can 
 be. Of this demagogue style, as of every and all species 
 of acting, Kenyou Leigh was incapable : if he had some 
 unconscious gift for hiding his privileges in the presence 
 of the unprivileged, they were hid in his lowly sense of 
 that eternal mystery which has made men so to differ. 
 Too far into that mystery he looked, not to see the 
 remorseless bequeathing of evil, how much of all human 
 character and condition comes not by the personal doing 
 or deserving ; how, in all that we call free choice, some 
 thing was fatalized ere the man was born, this old, old 
 riddle, that every thoughtful mind must struggle with, 
 this minister felt only more keenly than another. 
 
 With this insight he looked into faces like these of 
 44 The Rattler s" crew; and there was a touch in the 
 mingled expression of his eyes, which would have re 
 minded those who had known that rare lad} , of his dead 
 mother. It was a look which one sees sometimes in 
 women of sweet and noble natures, who, reared amid 
 all opulent refinements, pass through life with a kind of 
 angel s incredulity of evil. Too pitiful over the sorrows 
 of humanity to chide its sin, all the crimes of the world 
 seem to them born of suffering : they lean out from the 
 porches of their own sheltered lives, dropping, indeed, 
 a bounty which has no winter in it. In this heavenly 
 
116 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 ignorance the man had not been able to abide. If hia 
 mother s blood in him made him yearn over the fallen 
 with some instinctive, "Lord, lay not this sin to their 
 charge," he yet realized that the source of every thing 
 which is respectable in the race has been in the power of 
 the human will to struggle, not only against the difficulties 
 without, but the defects within ; and the mysterious gift 
 vhich he had to quicken this power in others thrilled ia 
 some incorruptible recess, even hearts like these. 
 
 Yes, the shipwrecked men, rising up one after PDother 
 from their irregular meal, gathered round this being, 
 who, flush on the high meridian of younger manhood, had 
 so perilled his life for theirs. They gazed at him as if 
 they were under a spell ; strange gleams beginning to 
 grow in their dark faces, signs of that struggling aspi 
 ration towards the greatness and goodness of another 
 which is the creative germ .of moral life. 
 
 A girl who, from a faculty of her artist nature for 
 finding something interesting in every thing that lived, 
 and the soft heart which did not ask too severely whether 
 it lived well or ill, the creature in hard conditions, 
 who from these qualities, and the universal attraction of 
 her fair face, had been wont herself to have a peculiar 
 ease of approach to the ignorant and lowly, silently con 
 trasted the influence which pleased with an influence like 
 this. The former, the feminine influence, thought the 
 girl, accustomed to please, was instinctively shut away 
 by every order of man from every really serious hour. 
 So she interpreted to-night that distance which was in the 
 sailors manner towards herself, as compared with Mr. 
 Leigh, a distinction not wholly due to rhe mighty debt 
 which they owed the la f ter. And restrained of all the 
 gracious young service, which, pitying them for the dan 
 gers thoy had passed, she was eager to render to these 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 117 
 
 poor men, Monny shrank timidly away, struck with a 
 sharper sense of being useless and cle trop, and lost in 
 nK,(irnfuller panderings on woman s sphere and its limita 
 tions than all the previous humiliations of the night had 
 caused her. 
 
 "The Rattler s" crew, indeed, watched both Mrs. 
 Doane s boarders with marked attention, the girl who 
 Looked the crown of her sex, as the man did of his, 
 they watched them both with that pathos of homage 
 which one sees sometimes in the lowly towards the elect 
 of their race ; and that homage, in truth, did make them 
 draw apart from the woman, but nigh, with some strange 
 outreaching, to the man. 
 
 There are two kinds of sympathy very precious in this 
 world, that of the being " who with all our faults loves 
 us still," and of the one who best grasps our situation. 
 The eternal sentiment of sex has so put some hint of the 
 former sympathy even into the attack made by the pray 
 ing women of the grog-shops on the dram-drinker, for 
 instance, that he takes, half-pleased, his buffetings, and 
 signs the pledge, partly in repentance of his vice, and 
 partly flattered that the lady thinks him so much worth 
 the saving. Still it is probable, after all, that, in its 
 most genuine hour of self-abasement and struggle, the 
 fallen life is most strongly helped by the other kind of 
 sympathy, that of its own sex, a man s distinctive 
 charity for another man being based on the fuller view 
 which he can take of the force of his temptations. 
 
 Certainly, in such men as were these wild sailors, it was 
 a sign of the absolute contrition which thrilled them at 
 present, that they saw in the fair girl, whose refined love 
 liness shone like a star under the homespun roof, a being 
 alien to them as the very stars, before whose face their 
 disordered lives fled away. But they brought them back 
 
118 A REVEREND IDOL 
 
 before the man, making some strange, silent review of 
 their dark memories, dimly wondering if the passions 
 which in themselves leaped in blind brawling and carouse, 
 only less dreary at the last than the sluggish torpor, the 
 dead routine of toil out of which the madness broke, if 
 these forces had indeed any kinship with the energies 
 which in him could flame so in peril, and breathe such 
 peace when it was past. 
 
 Peace did this man breathe? Oh, Great Hearts of 
 humanity, walking whatsoever haunted ways between the 
 lion and the pilgrims, calm do their lifted brows seem, 
 touched of no mortal weakness ? Nay, be sure that unto 
 them, and with only fiercer combat than others know, hath 
 somewhere been the lone fight with Apollyon, striding the 
 whole breadth of the way, fire-breathing, roaring hideous, 
 " Here will I spill thy soul ! " Yea, life s temptation, its 
 tedium, albeit in far other forms, were known to Kenyon 
 Leigh as to these poor turbid souls : never else, indeed, 
 had they drawn to him with such yearning inquiry. 
 
 Kenyon Leigh was not given to perfunctory exhorta 
 tions : he only looked at the sailors with his strange, pene 
 trating eyes as he sat among them, filling out, with some 
 little talk of the sea, the waiting moments while the im 
 promptu beds for all this company were being prepared. 
 So they did not suspect the clergyman until they came to 
 part for -the night ; Mr. Leigh having said no grace at the 
 irregular meal, as he noted how two or three of the sailors 
 furtively made the sign of the cross when they sat down 
 to eat. For the sake of these poor brethren the Protes 
 tant bread went unblessed : but now, when the mixed com 
 pany, all gathered round the hearth-fire, were going to 
 their short sleep as the dawn was at hand, the minister 
 rose up ; and mindful of the death to which they had all 
 been so nigh, simple as a child saying its evening prayer, 
 he knelt down with, " Let us pray." 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 119 
 
 And the sailors who made the sign of the cross made it 
 now, falling on their knees with the rest, or whatever sign 
 might witness to the power which made this man, who 
 out of his robes had not even what is known as the cleri 
 cal look, a priest forever after an order higher than Mel- 
 chUedec s. Out of the book could this churchman pray 
 on occasion ; though the soul of its old prayers, with their 
 simple, reverent phrase, was in his, as his fervent, impas 
 sioned voice arose. Haply the heavens into which lie 
 prayed were dim enough to these wild beings, most of 
 whom were men who crossed themselves neither in faith 
 nor fear ; but not dim was their belief in him who poured 
 the petition. Now that he saw them not, their wide-open 
 eyes, brimming with tears, never wandered from his face ; 
 they swayed towards him as if to partake of his nature : 
 yea, distinct at last, the divine longing dawned in these 
 darkened souls, not cupidity of heaven, nor terror of 
 hell, but the passion for purity uncompounded. 
 
 It was a picture of thrilling contrast, the shining 
 face of the man on the height of humanity, the marred, 
 marred lineaments of these in its depths ; but the wonder, 
 the beauty of humility there : was it that he could so feel 
 his brotherhood with them ? Nay, but that they could feel 
 theirs with him. 
 
 Mystery of one mortal life drawing its tides through 
 generations of honor and of worth, and of another whose 
 currents flow poisoned from their spring ! the hour when 
 any soul of the latter first discerns all the vantage-ground 
 of the former in how much more than external things, not 
 so strange were its poor human impulse to curse God, and 
 die. But the loyal delight which the most miserable of 
 men will take in every gift that crowns some exemplar 
 uf their race, herein is not only pathos, but a seed of 
 promise which surely awaits only nurture for all fulfilment, 
 
120 A KEVEREKD IDOL. 
 
 Monny, gliding in from the bedroom, where she had 
 been for a look at the sleeping baby, paused in a dim 
 corner of the many-angled old room, spell-bound at sight 
 of those streaming, upturned faces ; then with an answer 
 ing quiver in her own young heart, that rose up in her 
 sobbing throat, and sent a gush of tears from her eyes, 
 Blie stole away again, and left them alone with their 
 cLlirerer. 
 
A BEVEEEND IDOL. 121 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 " \ UNT PERSIS, do you suppose men can do every 
 -^- Ihing better than women, every thing?" repeated 
 Monny, with an emphasis that swept all mortal doings 
 from pole to pole. 
 
 It was the fifth day since the wreck of " The Rattler ; " 
 and Mr. Leigh had gone up to Boston to put the captain, 
 who was but just able to bear the journey, in the hospital, 
 the man having escaped with his life, but still with injuries 
 so severe as to require for a long time yet constant super 
 vision of the best medical skill. With the captain had 
 gone wife and baby, the replenishing of whose wardrobe 
 had been Monny s grand care for days past; also, as 
 the last of the crew to take service again on the sea, the 
 young Portuguese sailor, who had been half-drowned on 
 the night of the wreck. These all departing in care of 
 Mr. Leigh, the old house had settled back to its normal 
 quiet ; and Monny, straying down to the porch, and fall 
 ing into an afternoon re very there, had looked up out of 
 it, and propounded the above question to Mrs. Doane as 
 she apjx,ared in the open doorway, indulging once more 
 in the leisures of knitting-worK. 
 
 "Did you see how Mr. Leigh hushed that baby the 
 other night, when none of us could hush it? * pursued 
 Monny ; " and, whatever he pretends about the way he 
 came by the rest of his all-kuowingness, he hasn t lived 
 out for a nursery-maid," declared the girl, reaching this 
 
122 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 one solid point of certainty in her speculations as to the 
 right of Mr. Leigh to be so aggrandized with faculties. 
 
 44 Now, Miss Monny," replied the widow, coming out 
 to sit on the stoop as she waited for a fresh skein of yarn 
 which Susannah was to bring her from a certain bureau- 
 drawer up-stairs, 4t twas the most natural thing in the 
 world for that baby to take to Mr. Leigh. In the first place, 
 living on shipboard, twas a great deal more used to seeing 
 men than women ; and, in the second place, Mr. Leigh 
 brought it all the way that night to the house in his arms." 
 
 4 * Yes, missis," chimed in Susannah, appearing here to 
 Land the skein of yarn over Mrs. Doane s head, and add 
 her contribution to the philosophy of life, 44 and his Honor 
 J ud carry it so strong. A baby knows in a minuit whether 
 you carry it strong or not." 
 
 44 1 carried it with all my might," protested Monny, 
 recalling the strained arms with which she had lugged to 
 and fro that writhing infant. 
 
 44 Jess so, honey, and pears like a baby wants to feel 
 dat dere s some might left over. Seein dey are all flyin* 
 to pieces in dere little tantrums along of dere own nerves 
 and weakness, a woman s nerves and weakness kinder 
 drives em wilder. Whereas, a man dat handles em 
 strong and cool and easy sorter calms em down, unbe 
 known as twere. La ! women are poor critters, and even 
 a cryin . baby knows it," declared Susannah. With which 
 voice from Ethiopia going back on her sex, Monny was 
 quite quenched ; but as the handmaid vanished, and Mrs. 
 Doane bent over a knot in her skein of yarn, she mur 
 mured at length, as if thinking aloud, 
 
 44 That s just what some of the anti-woman s rights 
 essayists say, that men, whenever they have a mind to 
 try, can do every earthly thing, even woman s work, bet 
 ter than women can do it." 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 " Now, my child," replied Mrs. Doane in her calm, 
 pldcrly fashion, "I m afraid you read too much all that 
 heap of books and magazines you ve got in your room 
 this summer on woman s rights. If you girls that are 
 growing up nowadays are going to lay seriously to heart 
 all the stuff that you see printed for and against women, 
 certain you ll blow to all points of the compass to once. 
 There, she hasn t brought me just the right hank of yarn 
 after all," abruptly declared the matron, and forthwith 
 she went in doors in pursuit of the correct thing. 
 
 Monny, remaining still in the shady corner of the porch 
 where the vines clustered thickly, was soon lost again in 
 revery. The central figure of her meditations was cer 
 tainly the Rev. Kenyon Leigh, but she was by no means 
 weaving round him any dreams of sentiment. Monny 
 was much too great a stickler for the " proper order " to 
 be burning even hidden incense of tenderness to any man 
 unasked. Then, although the fashionable preacher, spoilt 
 of women, had dissolved to her so utterly and forever as 
 the man called Kenyon Leigh, that she wondered at her 
 own distempered fancy in creating such a chimera : and 
 although the extraordinary figure which had now risen on 
 her vision in its place occupied her thoughts wholly as a 
 man, and not as a minister, still the fact of Mr. Leigh s 
 profession remained in her consciousness ; and for Monny 
 to imagine herself a minister s wife was the one impossi 
 ble imagination to her. 
 
 Miss Rivers then presents at this time the phenomenon 
 of a young maiden to whom an unmarried man has be 
 come a subject of intense speculation, although he figures 
 IE no outermost circle of her fancy as her conceivable 
 lover. That this was a possible feminine condition, the 
 sceptical may be aided to believe, if we admit that there 
 might perhaps be traced in the coolly abstract exami- 
 
124 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 nation which the Rev. Kenyon Leigh was undergoing in 
 this young head some subtle, far-off connection with what 
 could be called matters of the heart ; that is, if the young 
 lady thus occupied with the image of a gentleman was 
 not asking what he thought about 7ier, she was very pro 
 foundly asking what the order of men of whom Kenyon 
 Leigh was a type thought about women, the personal 
 question, it will be seen, only in a general form. 
 
 Monny s saying that she wished to be approved of the 
 serious minds, the men who wrote the solid essays and 
 reviews, was her girlish way of stating the fact that she 
 had come to have, with her growing years, an especial 
 admiration for powerful thinkers dealing with what are 
 called practical questions. This taste in so imaginative 
 a girl arose partly perhaps from the instinct of a thor 
 oughly healthful nature to seek that which was opposite 
 to its own line of gifts, but still more because the old 
 Puritan character, renewed with whatsoever strange blos 
 soming in this fanciful maiden, was still there in great 
 strength : over and above all dreams of beauty, she in 
 quired earnestly into life. 
 
 She had, as we know, been especially led of late to 
 study what this weighty order of masculine intelligences 
 thought of the feminine ; and she had suffered what might 
 be called a pain of the heart from whatever slights these 
 admired sons of wisdom put upon her sex. And now 
 there had walked into her immediate knowledge and ob 
 servation a very commanding specimen of the serious 
 mind ; " and, lo ! he came scorning women. This was the 
 aspect under which the Rev. Kenyon Leigh became a 
 subject of such profound reflection to the maid sitting on 
 the vine-covered porch. She could not forget that he had 
 once proposed to leave that house because a young lady 
 was boarding there. Now that the coxcombry which she 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 125 
 
 r""i formerly attributed to the New- York minister was 
 removed as far from her idea of him as the east is from 
 the west, this proceeding of his was simply an overwhelm 
 ing argument to prove that such men habitually avoided 
 the frittering atmosphere of women whenever it was pos 
 sible. 
 
 Weighed down by these thoughts of gloom, Miss Monny 
 was only roused by the step of Mrs. Doane again on the 
 porch, as she called to Susannah in the yard with some 
 remark which told that Mr. Leigh was expected by the 
 evening train, and that " high tea " must be prepared for 
 the traveller. Or rather, since that phrase was not cur 
 rent with the Cape-Cod woman, her direction was, that 
 some addition of " hearty vittles " should be made to the 
 evening meal for a minister who was not addicted to pie. 
 
 This suggestion of Mr. Leigh s return moved Monny 
 instantly to forsake the porch, and go up to her own 
 room, where arraying herself for a walk, she departed, 
 intending that the minister s arrival should find her 
 absent. 
 
 Monny s impulse in the present days to avoid Mr. 
 Leigh was as much more active than her former one had 
 been, as a very decided sense of embarrassment in an 
 other s presence is stronger than a nonchalant indiffer 
 ence to it. Being a well-bred young lady, and no pert 
 hoiden by nature, Monny was quite appalled now to re 
 member her past style of demeanor to Mr. Leigh; and 
 yet some obstinate remnant of perplexity about him made 
 it mysteriously difficult for her to find the fitting new 
 lu-havior: so she simply slipped out of his way to avoid 
 behaving to him at all. 
 
 Going down the lane, seaward, she still went on, how- 
 rver, with her silent commeasuring of man and woman. 
 Down the long lane, past the little Ilines house, where 
 
4.26 A KEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 she had been so often during the last few days, out upon 
 the sea-banks, and away to the point off which "The 
 Rattler" had gone to pieces, its human freight brought 
 in by the mighty daring of one man, to this place came 
 Monny ; and its reminiscences were well calculated to 
 confirm her present depressing idea of power, force, as 
 the only symbols of high human worth. 
 
 These same qualities in their purer spiritual manifesta 
 tion, had she not felt them to be the root of that mys 
 terious influence so unconsciously exerted by Mr. Leigh 
 over the souls of those debased men whose bodies h^ had 
 plucked out of the deep ? Monny could see their wild 
 faces now uplifted to his around that hearth-fire ; and 
 she was undoubtedly right in her feeling that not easy 
 going toleration of the worst that is in him, but stimulus 
 of the best, is, finally and at the last, what the lowest 
 human being really longs for, as well as needs. 
 
 All the everlasting old saws that she had heard about 
 the supreme moral influence of women snapped in utter 
 brittleness to the girl in her present train of thought : the 
 world seemed to her all a man s world, in the stress and 
 strain of whose real issues women had no part. This 
 minister who could so bow himself to the refuse of New- 
 Orleans wharves was the same man who had been bored 
 at the idea of a young lady under the roof where he was 
 to pass a few summer weeks. Was it merely the "young 
 lady division of the female sex that he had such a dis 
 gust for? queried the girl; and she had an odd thought 
 that she would like to have seen how he would pray for 
 women of the same class as were those sailors. Then 
 this fancy was blotted by a peculiarly disturbing cloud, 
 a thought of all the nonsense mixed up with the devotion 
 of women to ministers ; and with a sense that this was 
 a most besnarled creation for her sex, Monny climbed 
 
A ni:vi:m:xD IDOL. 127 
 
 down one of the hollows of the bank to the beach below, 
 wlu 1 re she roamed till the sun fell low over the sea, and she 
 heard the railway whistle blown at the station of the little 
 village, and anon the train rolling past her as it threaded ita 
 narrow way down to the end of the Cape. 
 
 The passenger expected by Mrs. Doane had duly 
 alighted at the station, but had disappointed the stage- 
 driver there by deciding to walk to his boarding-place, 
 and even to carry his baggage ; that is, a bulky brown 
 paper parcel which he had with him, quite cumbersome 
 enough to be called by that name. Swinging this load in 
 his hand, he set out on his walk home, proceeding by the 
 extremely roundabout way of striking first for the seashore. 
 With his rapid step, he was soon beyond the little village, 
 and traversing the thickets of bay and boxberry, and all 
 the unfenced wild that he had come to know so well, and 
 which apparently he was very glad to be returned to. 
 Still it might not be safe to assume that any thing more 
 than a merely general sense of satisfaction made the elas 
 ticity of his step, the light of the clear glances which 
 swept the lonely barrens and the sea : he certainly did 
 not look like a being dependent on any particular thing, 
 still less on any one creature, for his joy. No, as he 
 walked with his brisk, strong tread, and that indefinable 
 port of the man unsubdued to the domestic yoke, it 
 seemed a little singular that women should ever have 
 wasted their hearts on one whose whole air so suggested, 
 in defiance of Genesis, that man was created to be alono. 
 and that he found it extremely good. 
 
 Still he had, as we know, very active ties of a certain 
 sort to his fellow-creatures, and the complications which 
 had arisen from his endeavor to do his duty by one of 
 th ^se was the occasion of his present little ramble. Yes, 
 as he approached the shore, his way of glancing about 
 
128 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 him in mere pleasure at the prospect changed to the 
 definite expression of a man surveying the landscape in 
 search of some one. The minister s eyes were very 
 keen and bright, and could pierce afar ; moreover, this 
 coast was so bare, one could look along it for miles and see 
 any creature astir on it, unless it might be hidden by one 
 of the hollows of the bank : so, having explored certain 
 of these, he descended at once to the beach below. Ho 
 had scarcely reached this level when he discerned at a 
 distance a feminine form sitting motionless on a pile of 
 driftwood, not far from the sea-line, with a dog taking 
 short runs along the water s edge, as a clog might who 
 was making an occasional jocular snap at a beach bird to 
 relieve the dulness in which the grave mood of his mistress 
 left him. 
 
 The minister, at sight of these figures, made the mo 
 mentary pleased start of a man who has found what he is 
 looking for ; but the next moment he somewhat slackened 
 his rapid pace, while, for the first time during his walk, a 
 shade of embarrassment crossed his face. Monny and 
 her dog in this place vividly recalled to him that morning 
 of his first introduction to the pair frolicking by the waves ; 
 and he remembered just now all the fate which he had 
 had to affront the young lady from the beginning. He 
 concluded that she felt very severely affronted with him 
 in his taking away of her Popish books. That incident 
 had occurred, it will be remembered, on the same day as 
 the wreck ; and he had been well aware, that, in the time 
 which had elapsed between that day and his going *jp 
 to Boston, Miss Monny had behaved to him with an 
 entirely new reserve, a grave distance and silence, which 
 he found an extremely unsatisfying change from the en 
 livening doses of derision to which she had been wont to 
 treat him. So, in a hope to dispel the memory of the 
 
A REVEBEXD IDOL. 129 
 
 proceeding whose causes he could not explain to the 
 maiden, he had bought for her in Boston the budget of 
 literature which he had now on his arm. A budget it 
 was : first, he had laid in a stock of such saints as 
 1" rancis de Sales, Thomas a Kempis, etc. ; then, because 
 all this type of spirituality lacked something to his own 
 robust mind, he added Marcus Aurelius, superadding 
 thereto a volume of Matthew Arnold s essays, in a dim 
 notion that this writer s study of the stoic philosopher 
 might a little break him to Mouny s reading. His faith 
 was probably very dim that she would really read any of 
 these books at all : still certain other moralists of attractive 
 literary style went into the pack. Then, as a sweetener to 
 all this seriousness, a handful of comfits, which might 
 really be to the girl s taste, he added some of the latest 
 English and American novels (quite unread by himself), 
 and some volumes of poetry, gotten up with extreme rich 
 ness of binding and illustrations. 
 
 It had seemed to him highly natural in Boston to make 
 up this parcel to propitiate the pretty creature at his 
 Cape-Cod boarding-place, whose last phase of wrath 
 towards him had left him so dull and forlorn. Equally 
 natural he thought it, when he alighted at the station, to 
 go in search of her in her favorite haunts at this hour, 
 ani to take the books along with him for presentation on 
 the spot ; uui u -w, when he was fairly in sight of the 
 maiden, he sud(Viuy woke up to the perception that he 
 had been a gret.t bungler in all his management about 
 those ill books from the beginning. 
 
 He realized this still more forcibly when Monny, moved 
 by the watchful attitude of her dog, as he suddenly 
 descried the minister in the distance, to glance herself 
 along the shore, rose instantly upon that glance, and 
 n>-*ved swiftly away, vanishing with Duke George by the 
 
130 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 first opening which allowed one to reach the bank from 
 the beach below. The gentleman and the young lady 
 were too far apart for the ceremony of exchanging bows ; 
 but Mr. Leigh felt that he had beeii perfectly recognized, 
 and that this sudden flight of his fellow-boarder was the 
 cut direct. Naturally, on this reception, he lingered 
 about the beach for a while, to allow the feminine rambler 
 undisturbed freedom of the bank : so Mrs. Doane s high 
 tea was decidedly waiting when the returned traveller at 
 last sat down to it. Miss Rivers was in the house, the 
 presence of Duke George announced that fact, but she 
 was nowhere visible ; and not greatly ministering on this 
 occasion to that secret satisfaction with which women, 
 especially when they have themselves spread the board, 
 behold a good masculine appetite, Mr. Leigh soon left his 
 landlady alone at the table, and went to his own rooms. 
 
 There, however, with the usual male instinct to settle 
 up somehow an affair that is hanging at loose ends, he 
 opened the old-fashioned little dark cupboard in the wall, 
 where Monny s Holy Fathers were in hiding, not with 
 the slightest intent of returning them, he was never 
 further from that idea, but merely to count out, saint 
 for saint, from the lavish pile which he had bought for 
 Miss Monny. the precise tale of books which he had taken 
 from her. 1 hese were not many ; but judging, that, in 
 the young lady s present mood towards him, gifts from 
 his hand would not be acceptable, he despatched this 
 exact equivalent of books, and no more, to her room by 
 Susannah, with no explanations whatever. Then, having 
 shoved into the darkest corner of the Puritan dark closet 
 the saints in their indecency, he flung in after them 
 Marcus Aurelius, Matthew Arnold, novels, and editions 
 de luxe of poetry, pell-mell. But as the novels were 
 extremely stupid, and the elegantly bound poetries decid- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 131 
 
 edly too elegant not to have been an embarrassing gift 
 for Monny to receive at this time from Mr. Leigh, and 
 as she hud not only read Marcus Aurclius, but had been 
 first led to read him through that identical volume of 
 Essays in Criticism" by Matthew Arnold, which she 
 had devoured every line of, in view of these things, 
 she was not in a way to suffer at present for want of any 
 thing that the dark closet contained. 
 
 She was consciously suffering, however, when Susannah 
 came in on the above-mentioned errand in behalf of Mr. 
 Leigh, from the memory of her rudeness in running away 
 from that gentleman down at the seashore. She had not 
 the least idea that he came that way expressly to seek 
 her, the cars always gave her a headachy longing her 
 self for a ramble in the fresh air, but she felt the 
 incivility of not having staid to greet him after his ab 
 sence. She did not know what mysterious nervousness 
 had put wings to her feet at the very sight of him. She 
 could only hope that he had not perceived her, at least 
 that he had not perceived that she perceived him ; and 
 she would not appear at the tea-table, lest her conscious 
 face should betray the fact that she had seen him before. 
 
 Either because she was so pre-occupied with this mat 
 ter, or because the vast depths of Mr. Leigh s domineer 
 ing made an abyss that she had given up all attempt to 
 fathom, Susannah s entrance presently with the substi 
 tuted books made scarcely more than a passing ripple ia 
 htjr tbsughte. 
 
132 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE very old truth, that we only know the value 
 of things by losing them, the Rev. Kenyon Leigh 
 proved, with much astonishment to himself, in the days 
 that now followed, when he found that the vanishing of 
 that disrespectful nymph whom he had known as Miss 
 Monny Rivers from his daily ways took therefrom some 
 brightness, which he missed as if it had become a neces 
 sary ray to his life. The maiden was still under the 
 roof, but she might almost as well have been at the anti 
 podes. Her former reticence was of a kind that the 
 minister could amuse himself by trespassing on. To 
 pause when he saw that airy approaching figure, and 
 waylay it with some of those perfectly needless and 
 uncommonly stupid questions with which he evoked its 
 frosty, keen morsels, its sudden impatient flashes of reply, 
 how often Mr. Leigh had indulged in this recreation, 
 and how valuable a recreation it was to him, he was not 
 in the least aware till all its opportunities were ended. 
 The manner, by the way, in which the minister had taken 
 this diversion, it was not wholly strange that Monny 
 should have construed as " lordly." Extreme simplicity 
 of character and the sovereign extreme of pride have 
 this in common, that both are unperturbed by anxiety to 
 please. Solicitude as to the sort of figure which he him 
 self was making in the eyes of others was, in general, 
 peculiarly absent from Kenyon Leigh ; but of late, with 
 reference to one young mortal, the personal question , 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 133 
 
 AYhat she thought about him? had begun to deflect thi? 
 hitherto single-minded character. 
 
 He did not wish to make too unpleasant a figure in 
 Mi 33 Monny s eyes: he had a mysterious longing for her 
 to fly in his face again, and yet an unwillingness that she 
 should take that obnoxious view of him which made her 
 fly in his face. In this paradoxical state of mind the man 
 was as newly scrupulous not to intrude on the maiden s 
 reserve as she was newly vigilant in guarding it. Mean 
 while, across this double gulf of distance her image came 
 to haunt with extraordinary persistency his thoughts. Of 
 course he had to think about his fellow-boarder some 
 what, to think how he should make up with her. He 
 must watch a good deal her goings-out and comings-in 
 to see if he could anywhere seize a favorable opportunity 
 to say or do something amiable, merely to show himself 
 in a kind of human light to a young creature whom any 
 one would be sorry to have seriously vexed and offended. 
 With these duteous cares, he slid into much thinking 
 about .Miss Monny, which could only be referred to a 
 charm for his thoughts in the subject itself. A very idle 
 charm he would have confessed. His judgment, which 
 still kept its cool, parallel line beside the path of his 
 imagination on this theme, smiled at the preposterousness 
 of the fancy which invested, for instance, such questions 
 as "AVhere did you learn to do chicken-stews?" with 
 s >me character which made the vivid moment when the 
 girl had flown at him with that mighty demand recur 
 again and again to his memory. Her mingled air that 
 night of a mutinous child and a solemnly earnest woman, 
 it was a part of the same glamour that was always 
 ibout her, the suggestion, the hinted depths which made 
 her mere silent figure, pacing in the sunset along the or 
 chard line, a picture, which, to tell the truth, the minister 
 
134 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 had formed a habit of keeping his western window-blinds 
 always closed, their slats turned cunningly downward, 
 expressly to survey unseen. 
 
 It was the very newest ambuscading under the sun for 
 the Rev. Kenyon Leigh. Pink beauties and pale ones, 
 blondes and brunettes, and all the shades between, had 
 this minister, whose ways had been so full of fair wom.-n, 
 oeheld, with eyes by no means blind to their beauty. 
 He had seen them as the flowers of the field ; nor more 
 than the flowers of the field did they take tribute of *his 
 thoughts in hours of work and study. But this dreaming 
 girl under the apple-trees, revolving, Heaven knew what 
 follies in her half-drooped head, that was the minister s 
 sober idea of her, all the same, it had been a mysteri 
 ous refreshing to him to lift his eyes, as he sat writing in 
 the languid close of the day, and see her there ; and he 
 missed her now that she came no more. For Monny 
 took her little airings no longer in the western yard. 
 Not that she had ever discovered her observer behind 
 the guarding blind ; but she had grown conscious of 
 the very side of the house where abode the man whose 
 existence she had formerly forgotten, save when he 
 insisted upon thrusting on her the importunate fact. 
 All her daily routine of life, indeed, in the old house, 
 was broken up. The first thing she had done, when 
 the Samaritan labors incident on the shipwreck were 
 ended, was to march into Mrs. Doane s kitchen, there 
 to make most thorough-going, experimental study of 
 the whole science of cookery. We may remark here, 
 that, as any full-grown girl of intelligence may do, Monny 
 became mistress of this art in a very few days, in all its 
 ordinary branches. And as to ascend from these to every 
 flourish of the extraordinary requires only the ability to 
 read cook-books, which instructive works are usually writ- 
 
A REVEREN 7 D IDOL. 135 
 
 ten in quite elementary phrase, it appears that the future 
 households of this nation are not necessarily doomed to 
 starvation, because Miss Rivers s former night of domestic 
 ignorance may perhaps be paralleled in this school-going 
 generation among many American girls who will need 
 personally to mix the family bread in all their after-lives. 
 There is, doubtless, a kind of education which spoils the 
 housewife : nevertheless, this young lady turned out very 
 superior bread on her second baking, simply because, in 
 one way and another, she had attained to a culture which 
 gave force to her brains, and a sufficient respect for every 
 necessary task to do it with her brains. She was so 
 cultivated a being as to have learned that luck cannot be 
 
 O 
 
 counted on in this world to bring any thing right, and 
 that, as a rule, it can be counted on to bring every thing 
 wrong. Thus, while Mistress Doane, who would have 
 pronounced at first that her beloved Miss Monny was too 
 brilliant a genius ever to make a good cook, concluded 
 next that this same genius enabled her to do whatever she 
 chose, as by inspiration, all the genius there was in the 
 swift progress made by her young apprentice consisted 
 in the unerring accuracy and skill with which she seized 
 and followed her instructions. To do things by brilliant 
 guessing and fitful dashes was a kind of inspiration that 
 Monny had learned long ago to trample under foot in all 
 serious work ; and the preparing of human food, she 
 rightly considered, since her memorable experiences on 
 uhe night of the shipwreck, to be very serious work, and 
 :i knowledge that she would never more be ignorant of. 
 But, as she had been accustomed to do serious work 
 which required infinitely more severe concentration than 
 tl.^se arts of the kitchen, she mastered them, ns we have 
 said, in brief space : ami having gotten up on her sole re 
 sponsibility several dinners of some elaborateness for the 
 
136 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 family household, and bestowed broths, bread, and cakes 
 of her own making, on all the sick and poor that she 
 could find in the neighborhood, she rested on her laurels 
 as cook, and being already, as we know, a good dress 
 maker, looked round for more worlds to conquer. Not 
 being a fool, she did not suppose that there was any 
 inherent virtue in cooking and sewing when the circum 
 stances of her position did not require it, even as this 
 same fact of her not being a fool would have prevented 
 her from despising or slighting these tasks if they had 
 been necessary. 
 
 So Monny was again pondering the question of woman s 
 business in this world with some troubled inquiry, which 
 prevented her from returning, with any sustained power 
 of work, to her easel. 
 
 One afternoon of these perplexed days, she was stray 
 ing on the shore, nearly two miles from Mrs. Doane s, 
 where, the high sea-bank sloping away, there was a long 
 Hne of salt-works, mostly abandoned, however, and not 
 far away somewhat of a pier, where boats ran in from 
 the mackerel-schooners belonging to the little village. 
 Two or three children of the latter, whom Monny had 
 had in her studio at various times, left their play among 
 the salt-works as the young lady came along, and ran to 
 loin her. A pleasure-yacht, whose manoeuvres Monny had 
 idly noted during her walk, was making now directly foi 
 the shore ; and, to please her juvenile escort, she went 
 down to the pier to see the gay craft a little nearer. 
 
 She was turning away, however, as its boat, containing 
 two or three young men, came with rapid strokes towards 
 the landing, when, one of its occupants rising up and 
 waving her a salute, she recognized Mr. Halstone Roose 
 velt, a young New-Yorker of her summer acquaintance, 
 and paused where she was. 
 
A KI:VI:KKM> IDOL. 137 
 
 The party were soon on the pier; Monny s admirci, 
 for this was another beau in search of the exiled belle, 
 presenting his two comrades, whom she met now for the 
 first time. All these young men, very graceful specimens 
 of the jeunesse doree of America, bowing with empresse- 
 ment round this rose in the wilderness, gave the dejected 
 rose at the moment, perhaps, a pleased sense as of Ler 
 little court come back again ; or it may be the girl s nat- 
 unil gayety bubbled with re-actionary fulness just because 
 of its melancholy suppression of late. At all events, 
 Monny had a sudden accession of high spirits, sparkled 
 with more than her wonted brilliancy : the amateur sailors 
 had their adventures to relate, of course, and the maiden s 
 laugh rang out with its old joyous sweetness. 
 
 Another man, approaching unseen behind the line of 
 mined saltworks, caught that merry echo with a start of 
 glad surprise : it was the Rev. Kenyon Leigh. It was 
 his first intimation of Monny s neighborhood : her usual 
 walks were to less frequented places than this ; and, com 
 ing himself directly from the village, he had nowhere 
 seen her on her ramble. Feeling deterred in these days 
 from seeking to meet his fellow-boarder anywhere when 
 she was really alone, here, where she was amusing her 
 self, as he supi>osed, with the fishermen and their children, 
 and in her old lightsome mood again, was a favorable 
 place and moment to thaw reserves ; and, with highly 
 sociable intentions, the minister stepped on to join himself 
 to the company. A pace or two farther, however, as a 
 <r:ip iii the projecting timbers gave him a glance at the 
 company, he stood still with a rush of most extraordinary 
 sensations. 
 
 Those handsome young yachtsmen, gotten up with the 
 last refinement of amateur nautical costumrs, cvrl:iiuly 
 made a very effective and pleasing group in their pictur- 
 
138 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 esque flannels round the delicately robed maiden. They 
 were thorough-bred youths, and were paying her theii 
 devoirs with every respect. What insane impulse had 
 the Rev. Kenj^on Leigh to take them up by their dandy 
 vaistbands, and sling them into the sea ! Especially 
 savage was this impulse, and particularly unjust, towan s 
 Mr. Halstone Roosevelt ; for his demeanor to Miss Rivers 
 was of the most reverential : he spoke least of the three ; 
 lie was the lover among the admirers. Moreover, the 
 minister, instead of scowling at that young man from 
 behind some old vats of saltworks, was bound in common 
 courtesy to go forward and shake hands with him as one 
 of his own parish of St. Ancient s, whom he had not seen 
 for a twelvemonth : yea, the youth, whom Mr. Leigh had 
 doubtless heard in his catechism, was not so changed in a 
 year that his minister did not recognize him at a glance. 
 
 We hope it will be remembered that the latter was 
 on his vacation, when we confess, that, if he had spoken 
 out his sentiments towards that silent admirer, their very 
 mildest utterance would have been, "Confound his im 
 pudence!" and that there rose before him as the most 
 intolerable of mortal visions Monny walking into his own 
 church in New York as Mrs. Halstone Roosevelt. 
 
 These emotions swept the minister s soul one aston 
 ished moment ; then, looking on that gay young group, he 
 felt suddenly old, and stricken in years. Turning sharply 
 on his heel, he walked away through the soft sand as 
 unnoticed as he had come. 
 
 The hour when a strong spirit in its maturity, a nature 
 that has come almost to hate the conduct that is not 
 founded on reason, finds itself seized with an infatua 
 tion, an impulse which it acknowledges to itself to be 
 the starkest oily, is a strange one. Kenyon Leigh had 
 lived through no such moments in his existence ao these 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 139 
 
 moments wherein he walked l>aek by the wild sea to the 
 solitude of his own room. Arrived there, he went straight 
 to his writing-table. He took up a pen : the name which 
 he was about to write was that of Mrs. Van Cortlandt. 
 With his habits about corresponding with women, to begin 
 a correspondence with that lady was to begin marriage- 
 proposals to her : indeed, such was his intent. He dipped 
 the pen in ink, poised it, threw it down with a great revul 
 sion which ended for ever and ever all thought of that 
 marriage. For the first time in his life he now distinctly 
 said to himself that he should never marry ; for he knew 
 that there was but one wife in the world that he wanted, 
 but one of all Eve s daughters that he had ever wanted, 
 a girl who put her soul to the fashions, who had seldom 
 said any thing to him but the giddiest impertinences, who 
 had a manifest personal aversion to him which he had 
 wasted an unconscionable amount of time lately in think 
 ing how to dispel. All this madness and the mere 
 sense of wasted time, to men who have disciplined them 
 selves to make the most of the hours, is wont to be a 
 very sharp awakener the awakened minister reviewed. 
 When, where, and how had the lunacy come upon him? 
 
 If it had come through avenues of the heart s own 
 wisdom : if some kindred thrill of a spirit fearless, resist 
 ant as his own of shams and impositions, had made the 
 girl s impertinence to him a fascinating impertinence ; if, 
 through all the disguise wrought by the untoward circum 
 stances of their first introduction, some hint of her leal 
 self had yet penetrated, these intimations were subtle, 
 intangible, and the man strove against them at present 
 as the very crown of his delusion. He had seen with 
 marvelling other men under such hallucination about some 
 utterly commonplace pretty woman ; and he had seen the 
 hallucination end with a very few months of marriage. 
 
140 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Yes, he had lived long enough to see that over and 
 over. 
 
 Kenyon Leigh was no cynic : he was only a man in 
 whom a judicial habit of mind co-existed in an extraordi 
 nary degree with a hiddenly fervid and impetuous heart. 
 Unswamped by whatever emotions swept the latter, it was 
 the instinct of his brain to take calm note of facts, look 
 at things in the light of the evidence, distrust all impres 
 sions which these did not sustain. There were certainly 
 no facts, no external evidence, of any such qualities m 
 this girl as would justify the extraordinary spell which 
 she had laid upon his fancy ; and he roused himself to 
 break it. Under the impulse of this resolution he made a 
 sudden move to the western window, and flung wide those 
 masking blinds behind which he had so often watched 
 for a fairer vision than the sunset. The sunset streamed 
 goldenly into the chamber from which its rays had been 
 so long debarred ; and lo ! not under the apple-trees, but 
 approaching along the road, was seen at the moment that 
 other vision, Miss Rivers. Not escorted by the yachts 
 men, those gallants were nowhere in view, the maiden 
 was riding aloft in the chariot of that ancient mariner, 
 Isry-Chris. Aunt Isry, along with a variety of other 
 bundles, was likewise stowed in the cart. The pair had 
 evidently been on one of their marketing trips to the 
 village store, and Monny had somewhere forsaken her 
 admirers to ride home with them. The equipage came on 
 to Mrs. Doane s door, where uncle Chris began to clamber 
 out ; but Monny, setting her light foot on the wide tire of 
 the Cape-Cod wheel, sprang to the ground before him, 
 and ran into the house. 
 
 It seemed that she was going home at once with the 
 Isry-Chrisses to make one of her visits at their cottage 
 across the Cape. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 141 
 
 There were a few moments of echoing bustle in Monny s 
 rooms, then the sound of the light feet flying down the 
 stairs, of Mrs. Doane s voice bestowing the usual motherly 
 injunctions on her young boarder about taking care of her 
 self ; there was the noise of Duke George howling his 
 grief and wrath as Susannah chained him up to prevent 
 him from following his beloved young mistress ; then, 
 with its strangely assorted company, the cart rolled away. 
 And to the boarder left in the western chambers silence 
 AS of the grave seemed to fall on the house. 
 
142 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MONNY S present visit to the other side of the Cape 
 had been wholly un thought of until the arrival of 
 u The Golden Fleece ; " for by this classic name was chris 
 tened the yacht owned by Mr. Roosevelt, and which had 
 touched at Lonewater solely because Miss Rivers was stay 
 ing there. The party was bound for the coast of Maine, 
 and farther north ; but Cape Cod was not so worn out 
 a region to summer idlers from New York, that a young 
 man of ingenious fancy could not find very plausible 
 reasons for stopping a few days to explore it more nearly 
 than from the deck of a vessel. In fact, as Monny walked 
 slowly up from the pier, with her gallant convoy, towards 
 the little village and Capt. Gawthrop s house, to which 
 she could do no less than show the way, she could but 
 perceive that she was likely to see much of the devoted 
 young Halstone, if his yacht made the proposed stay at 
 Lonewater. 
 
 Apparently the pleasure which it had been to her to see 
 a little of him did not hold out to the requirements of 
 seeing him too much ; for having consigned the young 
 men to Capt. Gawthrop, who met the party on the way, 
 scenting possible boarders from afar, and availed herself 
 of the very opportune passing of uncle Isry s wagon to 
 return to Mrs. Doane s, she had scarcely ridden away 
 with the old pair when she resolved on taking flight forth 
 with to their cottage. She had left Caot. Gawthrop set 
 ting forth such inducements to the yachtsmen in the waj 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 143 
 
 of excursions in the neighborhood, that she doubted not 
 4fc The Golden Fleece " was anchored for the ensuing days ; 
 but as, when she made her adieus to the party, their stay 
 was not absolutely decided, now was hcY chance to run 
 away without too glaring a discourtesy, and according 1 ? 
 she determined to run. 
 
 So Monny crossed the Cape with the Isry-Chrisses, and 
 took her old place in their cottage, the little best room, 
 or parlor, on the ground-floor, permanently adorned by 
 the spare bed. Here she slept and woke ; and posing Isry- 
 Chris, he had been her model for the picture of the old 
 fisherman drawing up his boat, she painted some valiant 
 hours to the final completing of that picture. 
 
 But, having lost courage for any further efforts in art 
 just now, she spent the hours roaming out of doors, read 
 ing, or musing on the only book she had brought with her, 
 a certain French book which she had never opened 
 before. This was a volume of abusive sayings about 
 women, compiled from all literatures by the industry of 
 Monsieur Emile Deschanel, and entitled " Le Mai qu on 
 a dit des Femmes." 
 
 Monny s reading was not usually pursued on the scrap- 
 book foundation ; but this little volume, which, struck 
 by the title, she had bought when laying in books for a 
 general study of the woman-question, was impressive to 
 her now from its very fragmcntariness, making awful sug 
 gestion of the original unknown sources whereof these were 
 but the droppings. Droppings they were from corrupt 
 ages and from the disenchanted minds that are in every 
 age, all rendered into a tongue whose very idioms seem 
 made for airy scoffing ; and however decorously weeded 
 was the little book by its editor of too gross utterance, 
 and tied with a posy of French compliment to the sex :;t 
 beginning and end, it was still very melancholy reading to 
 
144 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 the maiden, a quite appalling response to her present 
 effort to penetrate the secret mind of man concerning 
 womankind. 
 
 True, many of the writers of these things were essen 
 tially jaded spirits, looking cynically at all life, and finding, 
 in the disappointments of love and the follies of woman, 
 only a more pungent theme than another on which to 
 exercise that kind of ghastly insight which comes of a cul 
 ture that has refined the head, but somewhere missed the 
 heart, that has made critical and exacting every taste, 
 but wrought no true delicacy of feeling. But though 
 some perception of this fact reached Monny, still the 
 insight of the book was too subtle after its manner, the 
 analysis of her sex too keen, up to a certain point, not 
 to oppress her with a vast and nameless oppression. One 
 notion that was haunting her at present gathered dark 
 confirmation from these leaves ; viz., that the intellectual 
 man in all his varieties had some mysterious feud with 
 woman ; if he was sensitive to her charm he yet rebelled 
 against it : what meant the strangely mingled cry of 
 adoration and of cursing that went up from so many of 
 these bitter pages ? 
 
 This young admirer of the intellectual man saddened so 
 over them at last, that she closed the French scrap-book, 
 and began to turn the scrap-book of memory, of her 
 own personal observation. There was her aunt Helen s 
 married life, the domestic history which she knew best, and 
 which would so well bear knowing. She had never thought 
 about that lady s marriage before ; for it is not natural 
 to the young to think of the marriages of their elders, 
 whom they have always seen in the same easy domesticity 
 of relation, as affairs that were ever in the making. But 
 she wondered now if her aunt had not chosen the husband 
 she had, expressly because, being socially above him, he 
 
A KI:YI:I:I:NI> IDOL. 145 
 
 would respect her through life as no other husband would ; 
 tlu- unequal scale between man and woman being righted, 
 as it were, to a level balance by this makeweight of 
 aristocracy on the feminine side. A man of a generous 
 heart and a plain head, which no elegant culture had 
 made subtle and mocking in all its thoughts, nor scho 
 lastic learning had made severe, perhaps this was the 
 only kind of husbands, the uncle Slabwell kind, thought 
 Monuy, who absolutely, in their secret hearts, respected 
 wives to the end, however madly all sorts of men made 
 hn e to women when they were young and had not come 
 to philosophy. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Slabwell certainly had not come to much 
 philosophy: he was a shining example of how much well 
 doing there is in the world with no right thinking behind 
 it, or no thinking at all. Of this order of virtue, indeed, 
 the domestic man, idolizing wife and children, finding in 
 devotion to their comfort all the chief enlargement and 
 purifying of a life whose aims would otherwise be narrow 
 and sordid, is probably as solidly worthy a specimen as 
 can be shown. A solidly well-behaved man was Monny s 
 uncle-in-law ; yet he had really no fixed principles of right 
 and wrong, save as he could see that family interests and 
 affections were somewhere touched. Show him a battle 
 field where that sacred queen of the family, woman, was 
 threatened in any of her sovereign claims on the -u*j. and 
 hot shot would have had hard work to finish him, or the 
 last ditch to choke him up, till he had seen those claims 
 established. But, beyond such convictions as these, the 
 nothingarian was all at sea. 
 
 It was quite possible for Monny to have, as she cer 
 tainly did have, a sincere affection for the uncle, who, 
 a mere marriage-connection, had cared for her as for a 
 . hi Id, and yet to miss in him all that strength of the 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 man " who lives by law, acting the law Le lives by with 
 out fear," and to know in her young way that only in 
 such spirits reside the really creative forces of virtue. 
 And now, when by a perhaps not wholly fantastic cor- 
 lelation of ideas the notion grew on her that her uncle s 
 fireside was so completely his altar, just because he had 
 no other altar, shrine neither of religion, learning, nor 
 art, to kneel at ; and that high devotion to these latter 
 Bhnnes men felt to be somehow hampered and hindered 
 by any ties to women, these fancies were peculiarly 
 dejecting to the girl, all whose ideals in the other sex 
 were beings of thought and aspiration. 
 
 It will be perceived, that, wherever Monny s study of 
 the woman-question had begun, it was virtually ending 
 in the husband-question ; albeit she was so little given 
 to talk of husbands, that her chaperone aunt had begun to 
 be terrified lest the girl had got some unnatural notion 
 of spending her existence in singleness, the more en 
 tirely to devote herself to art. But no : if aunt Helen 
 could have seen with how much deeper concern the maiden 
 pondered now woman s place as a wife than she had 
 ever done her place as an artist, she would have been 
 assured that Monny had formed to herself no plan of life 
 which excluded life s young dream of somewhere finding 
 and being united to the perfect mate. 
 
 We pass on here to say that she did not find that mate 
 in Mr. Halstone Roosevelt, which young gentleman made 
 his appearance one of these days at the Bay shore, armed 
 with a rifle for hunting foxes. It was not quite the 
 season for hunting that animal, even if he had been moie 
 numerous than he was on Cape Cod in these years. But 
 Capt. Gawthrop was certainly a cicerone who told re 
 markable stories, and the young man was in a way to 
 believe any story which gave him a pretext for exploring 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 147 
 
 that opposite side of the Cape where Miss Rivers was 
 now sojourning : so the credit of the fox-hunting fable 
 may be divided between them. The solitary sportsman 
 found the young lady slowly rambling by the sea in the 
 neighborhood of the fisherman s cottage ; but his recep 
 tion by her, although not discourteous, was yet so utterly 
 hopeless, that, being a young gentleman, Mr. Halstone 
 sailed away on his yacht next morning from the Atlantic 
 shore of the Cape. 
 
 Monny had little to reproach herself with concerning 
 this lover, with whom, indeed, her acquaintance had been 
 brief and transient enough to promise a healthful recovery 
 from his disappointment. Nevertheless, she returned to 
 her abstract speculations after this incident, more dissat 
 isfied with her life, past, present, and to come, than ever, 
 a decidedly increased sense that the earth was a pain 
 fully entangled sphere. 
 
 Life on the other side of the Cape, however, would not 
 be any further entangled by yachtsmen at present : so, on 
 the day after the sailing-away of "The Golden Fleece," 
 Monny decided to return to Mrs. Doane s. Towards 
 nightfall, therefore, when uncle Chris had finished the 
 day s fishing, the old horse was put to the wagon, and 
 Monny set forth over the roadless sands lying like a 
 ribbon between the great widths of waters. So vast they 
 seemed to-night, with the unbroken dome of the sky 
 making another immensity above, and the wide sighing 
 of the pine-trees as wandering winds from the two seas 
 blew over them with the sinking sun, the mystery of 
 nature grew too mighty at last for this young heart, over 
 charged with that other mystery of life ; and with a glad 
 re-action she saw the dear lights from Mrs. Doane a 
 windows shine across the waste. Jumping down at the 
 familiar gate, she ran up to the porch with such a rush 
 
148 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 of home-coming joy. she even forgot all Le Mai qu on 
 a dit cles Femmes." 
 
 Hope of Monny s return to-night had been quite given 
 up by this hour ; and when her roguish bright eyes peeped 
 slyly round the half-open dining-room door, where Mrs. 
 Doane was just distributing a waiterful of dishes for the 
 ii orrow s breakfast, what a glad start and outcry of the 
 matron, threatening all the dishes ! what a bounding-in 
 of Duke George, who, napping on the western door-stone, 
 had not heard the sand-muffled wheels come up on the 
 other side of the house, and had to make up for his lost 
 chance at the gate by thrice-devouring transports of affec 
 tion now ! and black Susannah, dropping the sponge she 
 was setting for bread, and flying in from the kitchen, 
 altogether there was such a greeting as if Monny had 
 been round the world. 
 
 There are beings whose briefest absence from a dwell 
 ing every breathing thing in it seems to feel. Sometimes 
 it is a gentle, unobtrusive presence whose coming or 
 going makes this change in the house-atmosphere, in 
 some way so quiet as to be undefined. Or, again, these 
 lights of the home, and such a one was Monny, burst 
 in like a sunrise on the positive gloom their departure 
 hns made : there is a stir of anticipation, a sense of 
 revival after collapse ; they seem always to bring news, 
 though they bring only themselves ; and albeit the present 
 home-circle comprised but a dog and two old women, one 
 white and the other black, Monny s coming was with a 
 little tumult of acclaim. This rejoicing echo floated out 
 into the front entry, telling who must surely be arrived 
 to a man, who, coming in from a solitary walk in the 
 summer night, just now entered the house that way 
 On his morning walk the day before, we may remark 
 here, he had witnessed the sailing-away of " The Golden 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 149 
 
 Fleece," a departure seen by him with such a sudden 
 great rising of satisfaction as reason had had to put 
 mightily down. Which exercise did not in the least pre 
 vent him from standing still now, with a great throb ot 
 the heart, as he heard that voice, as it detached itself 
 presently from the other voices, a light step coming 
 fleetly on towards the inner door leading into the entry 
 where he was ; for Monny had taken a lamp to go up to 
 her rooms by the* front stairs. Opening narrowly the 
 entry-door, she slipped swiftly through, and turned, so to 
 shut it as not to damage the nose of Duke George on the 
 other side, whose company just then she did not want 
 up-stairs. Then, facing about, she first discovered Mr. 
 Ajeigh, standing with some arrested action, as if about to 
 hang his hat on its usual peg behind the front door. 
 Monny also stood arrested for an imperceptible moment, 
 a strange medley of memories small and great rushing at 
 once over her mind, memory of Mr. Leigh s last return 
 after absence, and how she had run away from speaking to 
 him down at the seashore ; of that other time when he had 
 stopped to greet her on her own home-coming from a for 
 mer visit to the Isry-Chrisses, and how she had laughed- at 
 him then the instant his back was turned. With a curious 
 compunction, a desire to make amends, she recalled now 
 these trifles ; while, mingled with them, rose a vision of a 
 black night and a terrible sea, and one swimming out into 
 them every inch of the way by death ; and again she 
 thought of the very books she had been brooding over 
 these uays past, the over-subtle, morbid, mocking minds. 
 Heaven knows what blessed sense of contrast to these 
 men, in the open-browed Anglo-Saxon before her, h^f- 
 consciously thrilled the girl, as, after that instant s pause 
 of vivid and various reminiscence, she stepped impulsively 
 forward, and with some sweet young grace of spontaneous 
 
150 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 trust, which cannot at all be described, put out aer soft 
 hand in greeting. 
 
 The man who took it looked down on the winsome, 
 smiling face upturned to his, which to his consciousness 
 had never smiled on him before, which now for days, that 
 seemed like ages, he had not seen ; and, wheresoever rea 
 son went, all life for the moment seemed concentrate to 
 him in but one longing, to gather this restored darling 
 into his arms, and kiss her. He by no means did this ; 
 he by no manner of means made any outward movement 
 to do it : how was the inward motion yet half translated, 
 though he only took the lamp from the maiden s hand, 
 and set it down by his hat on the table, with little ques 
 tions about her visit, any subterfuges that would detain 
 her? Too many men had brightened at Mouny s coming, 
 and darkened at her going, for her not at last a little to 
 perceive, what, if she had been a vainer or more self-con 
 scious girl, she would have perceived some time before ; 
 viz., the sort of interest which this "meddler" took in 
 her. For the rest, while Kenyon Leigh had a world of 
 self-control, he had but very little power of self-disguise ; 
 and the wiles of a lover to keep the beloved face in 
 sight a few moments longer were too utterly new for 
 him to practise, for them not to have even a boyish trans 
 parency. 
 
 There was something else that grew transparent also. 
 For what with the passionate personal sentiment which 
 was on the one side, and on the other all those abstract 
 speculations which had had so much of a personal start 
 ing-point of late in the individual man Kenyon Leigh, 
 a sufficiently magnetic atmosphere vibrated between these 
 two beings at the moment to communicate, to a nature so 
 sensitive as Monny s, something of the secret mind of 
 the man who thus stood delaying her because of the 
 
A HKYI:RI:XD IDOL. 151 
 
 charm her presence was to him. And she saw, what was 
 the truth, that he struggled against that charm as a weak 
 ness. Yes : in Kenyan Leigh s secret mind judgmeLt 
 approved not, nor reason sanctioned, his present action ; 
 and to all this lingering there at the foot of the old stairs, 
 dallying with a spell whose strength these moments but 
 too w ll taught him, his inclination, but not his will, con 
 sented . 
 
 Did the latter suddenly regain the mastery? Or did the 
 maiden, who, while she answered gently and respectfully 
 to whatever Mr. Leigh said to her, was yet mysteriously 
 disturbed in all that confiding friendliness with which she 
 had stepped to greet him, did she make some movement 
 so decided to end this interview that it could not be pro 
 longed? Certain it was that the man finally went most 
 abruptly, nor stood upon the order of his going, but first, 
 and with a swift, instantaneous departing, flashed up the 
 stairs, and shut himself in his own room. 
 
 This leave-taking was sufficiently remarkable to add 
 decidedly to the dazed maiden s trouble ; and in some 
 rising inner commotion, whose chief sense as yet was 
 bewilderment, she took up her lamp, and, mounting the 
 staircase alone, likewise shut herself up in her room. 
 
 To that chamber entered, about ten minutes later, Mis 
 tress Doane, to find the young lady who had arrived home 
 in such gay spirits cast desperate into a chair beside her 
 bed, whence she launched at the astonished matron, the 
 second she opened the door, this quotation : "In all time 
 women have had a predilection for fools!" (It was a 
 quotation surging up into her memory just then from 
 Monsieur Deschanel s bitter book.) " Well they may 
 have ! well the} may ! cried the girl passionately. 4 For 
 the fools really care for the women the}* make love to 
 with their whole nature." Monny felt sure now, for evei 
 
152 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 and ever, why aunt Helen had married the husband she 
 had : Mr. Halstone Roosevelt, too, she saw in such new 
 worth as a husband, it was a thousand pities that young 
 gentleman could not have tried his fate at this moment. 
 (Mr. Halstone was by no means a fool, only too young 
 to have developed up to Monny s hitherto masculine idea 
 of wisdom.) "The fools," she repeated excitedly, " do 
 not take a fancy to you with one side of their minds, and 
 disbelieve in you with the other. That is the way the 
 wise men do. I see it in the books. They disbelieve in 
 the character of women. The solid qualities of character 
 which win respect and esteem, the qualities which men 
 honor and prize each other for, they do not believe 
 women have those qualities ; and yet they admire them. 
 It is an admiration that hurts all round," said the girl in 
 a quivering tone that was indeed as of one wounded. 
 " It hurts the admirer too. I say it hurts him too ; for 
 all that Oxford professor writing, in a sentence that I 
 thought beautiful when I read it weeks ago, says, The 
 highest conception that humanity ever has formed is that 
 of power losing itself in affection. How losing itself? 
 how?" cried the girl, her voice thrilling with its pas 
 sionate searching. " The way Mark Antony lost himself, 
 and all the men in the stories who have cared for women 
 against their right reason ? You should not care for what 
 is against your right reason. To take pleasure in what 
 you do not respect there will be a dissatisfaction in that 
 pleasure, there will be no peace. I see it in the books : 
 there is no peace." 
 
 All the love-stories, French and English, that she had 
 ever read, rose up in the girl s mind as she made this 
 passionate lament, seeming to her only to show through 
 some febrile atmosphere of half-simulated joys all the 
 fathomless tumult of the heart unstilled ; these memories 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 153 
 
 really floated over her thought: still the widow s surmise, 
 that something besides what was "in the books" hud 
 thrown Monny so suddenly into this strange excitement, 
 was true enough also. 
 
 Very sure was Mrs. Doane that she had heard Mr. 
 Leigh s voice speaking with the girl in the entry; and, 
 much marvelling what a man who she felt certain was 
 Monny s secret admirer could have said to put her into 
 such a mood, the matron had yet the instinct to answer 
 as if indeed the books had been the only disturbance. 
 
 44 Now, my child, that ever you should go over to Isry- 
 Chrisses to keep on with all that reading that worries 
 you so ! I thought certain you d drop that kind of books 
 for these few days at least." 
 
 44 No, I shall never drop them ! " rejoined Monny with 
 energy. 4 4 1 shall read all I can find of those books ! 
 They show you great truths at last ; and truths, however 
 dreadful, are what you should wish to know in this world, 
 and not delusions," said the maid with solemn fortitude. 
 
 4 The man who made that sneer," she went on, 44 about 
 the preference of women for fools, in one particular 
 French book that I ve been reading, full of the satires of 
 men of all nations and ages about women, that scoffer, 
 in what he meant for scoffing, spoke the substance of a 
 truth. I remember now it is often remarked that the 
 most brilliant and superior women are apt to marry com 
 monplace men, the kind of men whom the wise men 
 call /ooZs, I suppose," said Monny, repeating the word 
 defiantly, as one who indignantly championed the same 
 fools. 
 
 44 Of course they would; for such women, just because 
 of their superiority, would see clearer than other women 
 into men and things, and would know that finer than all 
 the fine heads in the world is a good and a believing 
 heart." 
 
154 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 And ah ! even as Monny made this en phatie declara 
 tion, there came a piercing sense that the man who had 
 met her at the stairway, and whom she had seen in situa 
 tions which sift to the last atom the qualities of character, 
 that the heart of this man was just where he could oe 
 supremely trusted, save in this mysterious exception of 
 his attitude towards womankind. 
 
 Needless to say that neither in the Rev. Kenyon Leigh s 
 manner, nor in his inmost thought, towards this young 
 specimen of womankind whom he found so charming, had 
 there been any thing, that, in any current acceptation of 
 the word, is called disrespect. Nevertheless, in the pas 
 sionate agitation which had shaken the maiden since she 
 came up the stairs was a feeling as if something like what is 
 expressed by that word had come nigh her. Poor Monny 
 did not pause to consider that all her ways since her 
 acquaintance with Mr. Leigh began had been eminently 
 calculated *to convince him that she did not possess what 
 she had described in her own phrase as the solid qualities 
 of character. Nor, in fact, would his failure to credit 
 her with those qualities now have in itself alone wrought 
 her into such a state of mind. She had been thinking 
 very humbly of herself of late, and with much awe of 
 Kenyon Leigh ; and if he had met her merely with the 
 greeting that awful personages give to humble ones, salut 
 ing her with removed benignity across the gulf, her feeling 
 at least would not have been of indignation. But it was 
 her perception, that, while believing her a frivolous girl, 
 he was still attracted by her, it was this mixture of 
 things which had made her gathering wrath and woe. 
 
 Her little outburst of words to the matron had been 
 made the more unreservedly, because, as yet, in her con 
 scious thought, Kenj^on Leigh had no nearer place than as 
 a kind of typical being, a representative of the generaJ 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 155 
 
 sentiment of the superior man towards her sex. But 
 types and representatives could apparently be subjects of 
 very poignant reflection ; for Monny fell now into a silence N 
 which made the wise widow, only suggesting afresh the 
 injuriousness of too much poring over books to young 
 constitutions, and putting a few soothing touches to the 
 furniture here and there, say to the perturbed girl very 
 soon her motherly good-night, and leave her alone. 
 
 Monay s perturbation did not subside with solitude. 
 She was very far from imagining, not being a vain girl, 
 the real extent to which Mr. Leigh had lost his heart to 
 her : there was only a perception of some of that senti 
 ment in his manner towards her which she had been used 
 to in her admirers, mingled with the new, strange element, 
 which made him, as it were, an unwilling admirer. This 
 was her whole impression, but in her present mood it was 
 enough. She felt confronted in living reality with a truth 
 which had been growing darkly on her through all her 
 late readings and speculations; viz., that the being who 
 charms is not necessarily the one who is esteemed. This 
 truth, which, as well as its converse, must be called a 
 truth in the relations of men and women, however melan 
 choly the issues it is capable of containing, came down 
 on Monny as the final stroke of all her recent tribulations 
 of thought ; and the sick wail of the period went up at 
 last from this pair of red lips, " Oh, it s a dreadful thing 
 to be a woman ! 
 
 Meanwhile at this same hour, in the opposite chambers, 
 beyond the thickness of two partition-walls, a man of 
 heroic stature was preparing to do what heroes have had 
 to df before, to run away. Alas ! in this most undig 
 nified attitude I was obliged to show the Rev. Keuyon 
 Leigh at the very outset of this history. Then, however, 
 he was running only from the apprehended folly of an- 
 
156 A REVEREND IDOL. " 
 
 other : now he had to run from his own. And ah ! that 
 strenuous flight which is the flight from one s self must 
 be farther than to a neighboring boarding-place, or up 
 a staircase. Yea, his apartments in New York were the 
 nearest limit at which he proposed now to stop : thither 
 be intended to go on the morrow, and to come back no 
 n?ore. 
 
 The somewhat marked tendency of the weightiest of 
 men to fall in love with the lightest of women is a form 
 of human fatuity which has received bountiful satire in 
 this world : likewise, that other fatuity in these affairs, 
 which makes some gentle, especially sensitive, piece of 
 femininity so apt to select as her life-owner a man whom 
 all his fellows recognize as the most overbearing despot 
 of his sex. From these undoubted phenomena male ob 
 servers have generalized the statement that women love 
 best the men who treat them worst ; the more feminine 
 the woman, the more clearly appearing her innate pas 
 sion for being trampled on. And, even as the masculine 
 critic has made this deduction from the latter order of 
 cases, the feminine censor, to whom the former is nat 
 urally most impressive, has decided that intellectual men 
 prefer mindless women for wives, whether of the giddy or 
 the passively amiable variety. Notably, for example, in 
 those pages where the novelist spreads the panorama of 
 life, is the woman author wont to select for her most re 
 morseless strokes of punishment the superior man who 
 thus passes by his proper mate to be become enamoured 
 of the slight creature. Nor does she ever fail to imply 
 also that he has deserved all his scourging by the Furies 
 for Ids deliberate preference of the lower to the higher, 
 his base ideal, in short, of womankind. Thus George 
 Eliot s Dr. Lydgate, whose manly life-blood is murder 
 ously drawn by his blonde vampire of a wife, this man 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 157 
 
 of noble quality, we are carefully told at the outset by 
 the famous woman who depicts him, had " spots of com 
 monness ;" to wit, "that distinction of mind which 
 belonged to his intellectual ardor did not penetrate his 
 feeling and judgment about women." 
 
 Evidently the trait thus described, the taste whi< h 
 made him find the high-flown Dorothea, for instance, 
 "troublesome to talk to," and Rosamond s the delight 
 fully relaxing society, in his unlessoned bachelor days, 
 most evidently this was the accursed spot which would 
 not out in the author s view of him till he had drunk to its 
 lowest dregs the cup of torment mixed for him by that 
 same blue-eyed Rosamond. 
 
 But, in spite of these high examples, we are not quite 
 ready to admit that our hero was spotted with common 
 ness, because of his extraordinary fancy for the kind of 
 girl that he yet soberly believed Monny Rivers to be. 
 No : it is our view that he was really no more in love with 
 folly than those soft little sisters who will marry the 
 tyrants are with tyranny. He was in love with a tem 
 perament which may often go with folly, but which was 
 as intrinsically attractive to his opposite temperament as 
 is the man of forceful nature to the especially delicate 
 ana dependent type of woman ; and because poor Gri- 
 selda mistakes mere self-assertion and hardness of temper, 
 or, haply, some accident of brawn and muscle, for the far 
 finer qualities which make the really strong man, it is not 
 proved that she loves ignobly, only that she has that 
 frequentest of all earthly fates, to dream that she has 
 found a substance where there is nought but a shell. No : 
 all tiiese seemingly mad marriages, whatever madness of 
 misery they may and often do end in, end thus because 
 the qualities which so irresistibly attract are there only in 
 Bocming, or are not supplemented by other qualities : the 
 
158 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 attraction proceeds from a true instinct, and, like every 
 thing which is instinctive, expresses, subject to the due 
 checks and limitations, a sacred want. 
 
 The swift decision with which Kenyon Leigh had said 
 to himself, on that memorable afternoon of a few days 
 before, that he should never marry, had been no fitful 
 whim of a fevered moment, but a conclusion permanent, 
 with all his perception, not only of the depth of his feel 
 ing for one particular woman, but with the perception 
 also that hers was the only type of woman that he -should 
 ever desire for a wife. No being could possibly be more 
 astonished than he was himself at this discovery : in no 
 human brain could an opinion be more clearly registered 
 than was in his, then and still, the opinion that Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt was the suitable wife for him, and not the girl 
 whose caprice to bestow a smile on him just now, instead 
 of a frown, had been capable of turning the world upside 
 down to him. He did not argue with this amazing expe 
 rience, he was a man, in more respects than one, of the 
 simple old heroic temper, he did not analyze primitive 
 emotions. He said, that, if he staid where he was one 
 other day, he could no more be sure of his power to 
 depart ; and, it being characteristic of him to take some 
 immediate outward steps in the direction of any difficult 
 inward resolve, he was this moment packing whatever 
 books he had in these lodgings to be ready to leave on the 
 morrow by the ten o clock train. 
 
 There was no atom of a prig in Kenyon Leigh s com 
 position. Too broad and generous at all points had been 
 his life and training, that he should have the conventional 
 pattern of minister s wife set up in his mind as the only 
 proper wife for him. He simply thought Monny Rivers 
 an impossible wife for any serious man whatever, engaged 
 in any arduous work in life For he by no means asked 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 159 
 
 alone what the butterfly could at last be to such a hus 
 band, but what could such a husband be, what could he 
 really do for the happiness of the butterfly? His infatua 
 tion for the girl was quite strong enough for him to have 
 flung to the winds the question how he could live with 
 her : he could not so dispose of the question how she 
 could live with him. 
 
 It may be suggested that this was a man whose express 
 business in life was to develop the serious side of people : 
 why did he not set himself forthwith to create a soul in 
 the Undine who had so bewitched him, to mould this 
 maiden, now in her plastic years, into whatever manner o\ 
 mate he approved ? a favorite idea with many merely 
 secular men in choosing a wife. 
 
 Well, such an idea as this never occurred to the Rev. 
 Kenyon Leigh : he could have gone round the world, and 
 preached regeneration to every creature in it save only this 
 one ; it was the one piece of imperfect human clay myste 
 riously removed in his mind from any thought of fashion 
 ing it anew. He had decided, as we know, what Monny 
 did with her afternoons, and what she did with her morn 
 ings, and what she thought about when she walked under 
 the apple-trees ; and yet to see her walk under the apple- 
 trees had been an indefeasible pleasure still. Just as she 
 was, as he thought she was, he could not marry her ; but, 
 just as he thought she was, there is no denying that ho 
 had fallen in love with her, and that sentiment in the pure 
 heart will have an element of reverence in it, will make to 
 itself a kind of altar, whether the temple be there or no. 
 Yet none the less beside his sentiment of worship for this 
 maiden stood all the while his mental conception of her 
 a recognized disproportion of things, a non-correspond 
 ence between cause and effect, which in this man s nature 
 made a kind of panic. 
 
160 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 It was not a nature subject to panic : nothing had more 
 impressed Monny on the night of the shipwreck than to 
 see how, the instant he fairly drew breath out of water, 
 he so recovered his habitual equilibrium, it seemed impos 
 sible to realize at all the terrilic struggle out of which he 
 had just come. And indeed nowhere, perhaps, do great 
 rulers of men and things more show their greatness than 
 in this very ease and entireness with which they pass from 
 some tremendous commotion to calm ; and the secret 
 probably is that the calm has never really been lost at all ; 
 that, in their utmost hurricane of action, there has been an 
 inner centre of quiet, never invaded, controlling all the 
 passion with which every faculty must move, so that in 
 its fiercest energy there is no frenzy. Certain it was that 
 this strong swimmer, not in the black whirling caldron of 
 the midnight sea, nor even in those spiritual tempests 
 of a year before, which had left unreached that sane, 
 sound core of purpose in the man which had brought him 
 home so soon as he found that what he voyaged for lay 
 not beyond the seas, not in these shocks had Kenyon 
 Leigh known the sense of chaos, and the rout of reason, 
 but in the contrary currents set in motion by a girl s smile. 
 Contrary they were, giving no promise, if he yielded to 
 them, but of unrest forever, Monny herself could not 
 have so testified as could the man who had met her in the 
 dim old entry, to the absence of all peace from a passion 
 wherein charm and esteem do not go together. 
 
 Assuredly he profoundly esteemed in Monny Rivers 
 many excellent qualities. He thought her guileless and 
 open as the day : it had been her first supreme attraction 
 to him. Nor had all her exceptional behavior to himself 
 prevented him from seeing that she was habitually both 
 well-bred and sweet-tempered. An innocent, lovely, be 
 witching plaything ; but he could not relegate her to any 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 1G1 
 
 such place in his life as one gives to playthings : the 
 paradox was true, that, if he had loved her less, he could 
 hf.ve thought of marrying her more. 
 
 And so, while the long leaves of the Balin-of-Gilead 
 tree swayed in the moonlight at the open window, the 
 books were packed, a kerosene lamp flashing into the 
 depths of the Puritan dark closet as the old Romish saints 
 were rummaged out therefrom by the minister s unforget- 
 ting hand, headlong went those brethren into his depait- 
 ing boxes, then a very few moments more sufficed to toss 
 all other properties which he had at Cape Cod into a state 
 for transportation. 
 
 And, these things being accomplished, he sought the 
 repose of the just. 
 
162 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 T INHERE arose next morning in the eastern chambers 
 -L of Mrs. Doane s house a much dejected young 
 woman and an utterly discouraged artist. 
 
 To young Monny Rivers unquestionably belonged the 
 title of true artist in this, that she only valued her vocation 
 as it might enable her to shape in some outward form life s 
 inner meanings. When, therefore, those grew dark and 
 doubtful to her, as they did now, her brushes fell from 
 her hand, and all her skill therewith seemed to her only 
 some poor trick which she had insanely wasted years in 
 acquiring. That sense which had finally settled on her, of 
 a primary, ineradicable discordance between the two halves 
 which make up the whole of humanity, reached, with its 
 blight, to every sentiment, emotion, and aspiration of that 
 humanity which she had ever essayed to express on canvas. 
 So taking a sick-hearted look around her studio this 
 morning, with a mere dreary wonder as to what had sus 
 tained her through all that drawing of lines and mixing 
 of paints, she went down-stairs. 
 
 It was not quite breakfast- time ; and Monny wandered 
 out into ,the much elongated back regions of the houso : 
 it ended in two wings, in one of which was the siimmgr- 
 kitchen, while at the extremity of the other was a room 
 known as the milk-room, although Mrs. Doane kept no 
 cow at present. In this latter room she found the widow. 
 
 " Are there any errands that I can do for you to the 
 village?" askeri the young lady, after she had said her 
 
A EEVEREND IDOL. 103 
 
 good-morning, one of the prompters of the question being 
 her habitual impulse to avoid the family meal-times : 
 which impulse was about the only sentiment that she had 
 left actively alive this morning. 
 
 "Bless you, my dear! nothing in the world that I 
 think of, replied the matron. " I ve just sent Susannah 
 for the milk, as little Bobby Gates is lame yet, with a 
 nail he run into his foot two or three days ago : so I told 
 his mother I d send till he was all right again. 
 
 "But Miss Monny," added the matron, as the girl was 
 turning away, " there s something I was thinking of only 
 a minute ago, that you used to do for me, if you re not 
 too busy." 
 
 Monny paused at this intimation that there was any 
 thing remaining in the offices of life to which her powers 
 were adequate ; and Mrs. Doane forthwith opened the 
 refrigerator, taking thence a roll of very superior-looking 
 butter. She imported, while she had these high-priced 
 summer boarders, what she required of that article for 
 table-use by way of Boston market, as the lower portion 
 of Cape Cod is not a rich grazing country. 
 
 44 1 was thinking just now, as I took a look at this," 
 began Mrs. Doane, u it came last night with the fruit 
 on the train, the real gilt-edged butter from Worcester 
 County, and a nicer flavor never was," said the house 
 keeper with satisfaction, "I wa,s thinking how you 
 used to ornament the butter-plates years ago, making 
 pictures in the butter, natural as life. Don t you remem 
 ber ? Now, if I cut off a round of this, would you maKe 
 one to put on the tea-table to-night? " 
 
 44 Oh, cut it all up ! " said Mouny carelessly. 4t I will 
 do Ihe whole, if you wish. Is it soft enough to model 
 now?" 
 
 44 Well, I think just about as you used to like it. The 
 
164 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 ice is all gone out of the refrigerator : so it s only about 
 half hard," said the widow, beginning to cut the butter; 
 while Monny was already gone to pull some straws from 
 the corn-broom, and then out of doors to select some 
 splinters from the wood-pile. 
 
 Returning presently with these implements, she rinsed 
 them in a bowl of water, and, sitting down by the old 
 deal-table, drew towards her the plate on which Mrs. 
 Doane had placed the first round from the golden butter- 
 ball, and began her work. The latter, meanwhile, had 
 taken the shortest cut to her kitchen ; viz., across the bit 
 of grassy yard, enclosed on three sides, like a little court, 
 by the walls of the house, with its two queer extensions 
 long drawn out under their sloping roofs. The house 
 keeper, crossing this outdoor space, had bestowed a look 
 on the corn-cake in the oven, and manipulated the damp 
 ers of the range, to deaden the coals a little for broiling ; 
 then, bringing a large plate or two, she came back, and 
 divided the rest of the gilt-edged butter into the proper 
 sections, laying them round on the plates in readiness for 
 the artist s hand. As the Centennial Exposition was not 
 yet quite arrived, with Western sculptresses making a 
 specialty of moulding heads in butter, Monny was not at 
 all aware that the material in which she wrought was 
 classic. She had never experimented in it herself, save 
 for the literal purpose of decorating Mrs. Doane s table ; 
 but, in the very peculiarity of her mood this morning, she 
 presently bent over her work with a certain absorption. 
 It was two or three years since she remembered to have 
 made any butter heads ; and, perceiving that her skill 
 had increased in that time, she went on elaborating her 
 grotesque material, with a half-melancholy, half-ironical 
 impulse to do well this ridiculous work which was her 
 long farewell to art, being quite sure this morning that 
 she had done with painting pictures forever. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 1(55 
 
 44 Susannah has come with the milk, and I m just going 
 to ring the bell," announced Mrs. Doane, appearing by 
 and by at the inner door. " You ll come to breakfast, 
 won t you, Miss Monny?" she added, pleased that thia 
 boarder, who was always avoiding the other boarder, was 
 entrapped for at least one meal. 
 
 To the matron s disappointment, however, Monny re 
 plied, " No. I want to stay and finish these now, if you 
 will please tell Susannah, when she has done waiting on 
 the table, to bring me a little breakfast out here." 
 
 The widow, having keenly in mind last night s myste 
 rious disturbance, did not venture to urge the maiden 
 further, but, shutting the door at her request, went to 
 preside at the breakfast-table. 
 
 Monny worked busily on, only interrupted by Susannah 
 crossing the little grass-plot from the kitchen presently, 
 to ask what she would have for breakfast, and coming 
 again to bring the chosen viands on a waiter. These 
 consisted of corn-cake, a boiled egg, and some sliced 
 peaches; which breakfast Monny consumed at intervals, 
 while she still shaped with her sticks and straws the 
 plastic substance before her. A little child on tiptoe, 
 tugging desperately to lift the handle of a churn, its baby 
 mouth pursed up, and its fat cheeks puffed out with the 
 effort ; a man with a milk-pail, letting down a pair of 
 bars, "the head of an eager cow being thrust over them ; 
 the face of a dreaming girl looking out of a dairy-win 
 dow, and forgetting to skim the cream, these simplest 
 little fancies Monny wrought out on one round of butter 
 nftor another ; but the born cunning of her hand and its 
 long-practised skill were in them. 
 
 Meanwhile there were boiled eggs and corn-cake on the 
 orderly breakfast-table in an inner room, and coffee ai d 
 chops, and baked potatoes, and such other substantiate 
 
166 A HEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 of diet ; but the minister listened, with some inner stiain 
 which decidedly interfered with appetite, for the light- 
 coming echo of a certain footfall, hoping against hope 
 to hear it through all the long-drawn-out melancholy 
 meal. At last, however, having pared peaches with 
 infinite slow nicety, and then forgotten to eat them, he 
 rose with one of his abrupt movements, and vanished up 
 stairs. 
 
 With thoughtful, knitted brow Mrs. Doane went slowly 
 out into her kitchen, meeting, at the foot of the back stairs, 
 Susannah, who came down from making the beds to ask, 
 with astonished glitter of eyes and teeth, " Is his Honor 
 gwine away? His rooms has got an all-clared-out look, 
 an portmanter an* things standin up on end ready to 
 start." 
 
 " Sit down, and eat your breakfast right away, Susan 
 nah, and don t be talking! " said the mistress, in a tone 
 of asperity quite unusual for her to employ to her long- 
 familiar handmaid. " The minister is going up to Boston 
 of errands, may be, or to dedicate a church, or something. 
 We are not to be noticing things about boarders," pro 
 nounced Mrs. Doane. But the extinguisher which she had 
 thought prudent thus to put on Susannah s curiosity by 
 no means satisfied herself. She stepped directly across, 
 therefore, into the milk-room ; but Monny was not there. 
 Having finished her breakfast and her artistic efforts, she 
 had strayed listlessly out of doors, and was now wander 
 ing, bareheaded, down the lane in rear of the house. 
 Thus the matron could not enlighten the alarmed per 
 plexity which Susannah s announcement had caused her 
 by taking a fresh look of examination at the young lady, 
 who, she was convinced, had to do at present with what 
 ever was unusual in Mr. Leigh s moods and movements 
 The widow had by no means failed to observe his mood 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 1G7 
 
 all break fast- time, and to connect it with Monny s ex 
 traordinary mood the night before, however mystified she 
 was as to the point of connection ; and, lost in conjecture, 
 she was going rather absently about some little affairs she 
 had to mind in the milk-room, when she heard approach 
 ing not Monny, but Mr. Leigh. 
 
 This unaccustomed prowler through Mrs. Doane s back 
 kitchens was, in fact, seeking his landlady to ask her for 
 whatever bill might yet be unsettled against him, and to 
 inform her of his intended departure at ten o clock ; for 
 he intended his going only the more firmly since his dis 
 appointed longing at breakfast to see once more the bright 
 face which he was to bid farewell to forever, since every 
 lapsing moment of that pain had but shown him anew his 
 necessity for flight. But he suppressed strange emotions 
 as he passed now from one to another of the queer old 
 rooms : it was a cleaving pang to part with the very walls 
 of the old house where he had found that pretty shell, 
 only a many-tinted, lovely shell ; yet he had heard in it 
 the murmur of the infinite sea. 
 
 Well, the man who was thus grappling with fate came 
 somehow to the milk-room, discerning the widow s honest 
 back through its open door. She was standing, at the 
 moment, before the big old table pushed against the oppo 
 site wall, where Monny s butter-plates were still displayed ; 
 and, as she heard the step of her ministerial boarder, she 
 had a sudden impulse to show him those works in butter. 
 Xow Monny, in her generally increased sensitiveness of 
 late about Mr. Leigh, had more straitly charged her land 
 lady than ever before to keep locked and hidden the som t 
 of her studio. But showing butter-plates, thought the 
 Puritan casuist, was not showing pictures; and. as tho 
 minister paused on the threshold behind her, she turned 
 about before he spoke, holding out to him one of the 
 plates, with 
 
168 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 4 Did you ever see any thing, sir, prettier than thai 
 which Miss Monny has just been doing?" 
 
 Arrested by the name, Mr. Leigh mechanically took the 
 dish extended to him, beginning to say, 
 
 "Where in the world do you get such a wonderful 
 stamp?" But the words had not passed his lips when 
 his eye recognized the fact which the matron hastened to 
 assure him of. 
 
 "There s no stamp about it at all, sir: she does them 
 all out of her own head, with little sticks and straws. She 
 did all those while she was eating her breakfast here," 
 said the widow, drawing forward the other plates to the 
 front of the table. 
 
 Naturally Mrs. Doane could not know as did Mr. Leigh, 
 who had much knowledge of art, how very extraordinary 
 the butter-plates were ; nor could all her surmises about 
 his interest in Miss Monny measure the sensations with 
 which he bent over that table. 
 
 He saw every thing on it at a glance, the remains 
 of Monny s breakfast: a fearfully suggestive sight that 
 was to him. It suggested to him on the instant that 
 utterly forgotten deed of his, viz., where and how he had 
 taken his first breakfast under Mrs. Doane s roof ; and, 
 whether or no that famous meal was " hot " in the eating, 
 it certainly "burnt him up" now to remember it. An 
 awful sense of having driven out this dainty girl, in her 
 white dresses, to take her meals in the uttermost back 
 kitchen of the house, where, taking them with one hand, 
 she executed with the other, in a fine sarcasm of the ogre 
 who had thus exiled her, things whose first stroke he could 
 not have made to save his intolerable- life : this sersation 
 transfixed him. Mysteriously must his guilty brain recall 
 the very viands whereof that shameless meal was com 
 posed, fried fish, for one thing : all their bones stuck in 
 
A REVE11END IDOL. 161* 
 
 his throat this moment. Perhaps that was why he could 
 not speak, but stood staring dumbly at the butter-plates, 
 with a mingled feeling of himself as a ruffian fit for the 
 hulks, of having been justly doomed, how many meals 
 since, to find no nourishment in victuals, for want of 
 that same exiled presence, and, under all these unquiet 
 nurses of the breast, some indefeasible rising wave of joy. 
 
 Did it rise because he heard Monny coming? for sb* 
 was coming, very slowly, over the narrow loose boards 
 laid for a walk to the well through the dewy, thick grass 
 of the little court. Slow with melancholy trod the maid : 
 there had been no strength for sarcasm in her this morn 
 ing, only a little sad satirizing of herself as she wrought 
 the butter-moulds so carefully. Nor did she lift her 
 brooding, downcast eyes now, till, as her languid foot 
 was set on the low sill of the open door, Mr. Leigh s 
 voice suddenly startled her. His glance did not meet 
 hers : only his side-face was towards her, as he stood still 
 bending down over the table, while he said, without the 
 preface even of good-morning, 
 
 u Miss Rivers, to have done these things you must have 
 done many other things in art. I beg I beg that you 
 will show them to me, something, any thing, that you 
 have done." 
 
 The widow, who was hovering with some alarm in the 
 background, drew an inward breath of content as she saw 
 Monny s startled look at this address pass into a question 
 ing one, then her hand go slowly to her pocket, from 
 which she took a key, laying it with no more ado on e 
 corner of the table. 
 
 " That is the key of my front room," she said. " You 
 can unlock it, and go in, if you like. A few of the pic 
 tures there I have painted this summer, and all of them 
 at some time." 
 
170 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 The softer maiden voice spoke in the same tone of 
 restrained quiet that the man had spoken in ; but the effort 
 of restraint was a little more apparent in her accents. 
 And so soon as these words were said, still without having 
 met her interlocutor s eyes, she passed directly on across 
 the little room, and out its opposite open door, continuing 
 thus her indefinite rambles around the house. For Mr. 
 Leigh, he took up the key forthwith, and went for the 
 door that it unlocked. 
 
 The Puritan widow, who had tried a little casuistry with 
 what seemed to her thus far very promising results, after 
 thoughtfully allowing the minister a certain length of time 
 alone in Monny s studio, concluded next that she had 
 better go up, and wander conveniently round a little in 
 the young lady s apartments, in case there was any further 
 occasion for her to act as a providence. The matron 
 acted in all these proceedings of hers wholly by instinct, 
 being by no means of a sufficiently speculative turn of 
 mind to have framed to herself any theory that would 
 quite account for all the behaviors that she saw going on. 
 But instinct in women is truly a great matter : so, armed 
 with a dust-brush, housekeepers can always dust, and 
 pictures need a great deal of dusting, the good soul 
 ascended. 
 
 Very opportune was her coming to Mr. Leigh in the 
 studio, on whom, it is safe to say, none of all the world- 
 famous galleries of art that he had beheld had ever 
 wrought as did this little gallery that he found hidden in 
 the old Cape-Cod house. And he needed at last the sub 
 stantial figure of his landlady, a woman who had known 
 about this amazing Monny from her babyhood up, to 
 assure him that what he saw was really not a dream. 
 One pretty keen sense he had had, to be sure, of being 
 awake; viz., when he took up the girl s sketch-book 
 
A ni:\ I:UI:ND IDOL. 171 
 
 where it lay on the table, the familiar thing he had 
 seen her carry about for weeks wrapped in a shawl. 
 Opening it now, he was doomed to behold at onee its 
 dated inscription, and to feel Monny mocking at him in 
 every letter of it ; for he perfectly remembered the morn 
 ing when that inscription was entered. Well, he was 
 presently absorbed in hearing Mrs. Doane s communica 
 tions ; for, inspired by such a listener, the tongue which 
 bad been so long unwillingly silent concerning Monny a 
 toils and talents waxed eloquent indeed. 
 
 Then, when this useful woman descended the stairs 
 again, she went in search of Monny herself. That young 
 lady, with all her frankness, was not one easy to approach 
 with gossiping questions on such an affair as her acquaint 
 ance with Mr. Leigh bad become ; nor was the woman 
 who had known her so long at all sure yet what the senti 
 ment on Monny s side of the affair was. So the diplo 
 matic widow confined herself strictly to business in what 
 she said to her young boarder. She found her stooping 
 among the flower-beds, gathering petunia-seeds. The 
 petunias sowed themselves every year in the borders, 
 growing like weeds there ; but Monny was searching 
 about now for the early ripened flower-heads, pouring 
 their tiny little globules of seed into her hand as some 
 thing very precious indeed, when Mrs. Doane woke her 
 out of her absorption with, 
 
 Miss Monny, the minister says, if you please, when 
 it is perfectly convenient he would like to see you up 
 stairs. I think he wants to ask you something about the 
 pictures: he is mightily taken up with them," was all the 
 matron ventured to add ; with which words she retreated 
 at once within doors. 
 
 Monny had scattered all her petunia-seeds at the first 
 words of this summons ; but, after standing irresolute a 
 
172 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 few moments, she turned, and went slowly into the house 
 by the front way. 
 
 The self-controlled Kenyon Leigh was at bottom an 
 impetuous man ; and, when he heard Monny on the stair 
 case, it seemed to him that no speech with her would be 
 possible to him, without uttering some of the wild words 
 of penitence and adoration that his heart was full of. 
 But the first sight of the maiden as she timidly appeared 
 settled all that tumult, leaving only one supreme solici 
 tude, to help, to sustain her where she wanted help. 
 What she wanted above all things just then was to be 
 perfectly calm and composed ; and she was secretly strug 
 gling against some mysterious trcmulousness of the nerves 
 which was bearing her desperately near to tears. To 
 break down and cry at this moment would have been hor 
 rible to Monny, in whom was not only all the instinct of 
 reserve and restraint which distinguishes the lady from 
 the mere impulsive female, but her general feeling of 
 being disheartened, hurt, and wounded, was by no means 
 wholly attributable to the man in whose presence she 
 stood. -And what of it was connected with him was a 
 very indefinite business that she was far from ready to 
 put any such definite point to as would seem given by 
 a display of emotion. No : she did not wish to make a 
 s^ene herself, and any demonstration of sentiment on Mr. 
 Leigh s side could scarce have failed to be highly distress 
 ing to her. 
 
 Young maidens right maidenly, even when they are 
 pleased with the admiration of the other sex, are much 
 less eager for downright love-making than seems com 
 monly to be supposed ; and Monny s inner history, of 
 late, had not been calculated to diminish her shyness. 
 But, if she did not want a lover this morning, she was 
 in a mood to ralue most keenly that somewhat uncertain 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 173 
 
 article for women to deal with too extensively, a man ? 
 friendship. So the friendly, easy, quiet words which 
 made Mr. Leigh s first utterance to her were as well 
 timed as possible. 
 
 " Mrs. Doane tells me that you have never exhibited 
 any thing. But some of these pictures would surely biing 
 you recognition now as an artist ; and nothing will be 
 easier than for me to get them advantageously placed for 
 you in New York, if you will trust me. I should like to 
 know \\hat of your work you value most yourself and 
 these \ ictures that are turned to the wall, if I might see 
 them also?" he concluded interrogatively. 
 
 The girl s fluttering pulses had calmed with every 
 moment of this address ; and she was presently walking 
 around her studio with Mr. Leigh, only remembering her 
 impressions of him the night before as some more of those 
 absurdly false impressions that she had been having about 
 this man from the beginning. Monny had, indeed, the 
 readiness of all large, sweet natures, to reconsider her own 
 adverse judgments, to believe herself mistaken : life was 
 yet a new strange book to her, in which it was so easy to 
 read amiss. 
 
 It seemed entirely natural to the girl that Mr. Leigh 
 should have all knowledge. That was not true, of course ; 
 but it was true, as Monny at once perceived, that he was 
 not only an enthusiastic lover of art, but a most rare 
 connoisseur, especially for an American. lie had never 
 drawn a line himself ; but certain circumstances had so 
 highly developed in him the critical faculty in these things, 
 nis judgment of a work of art was a recognized authority. 
 And, what is not invariably found in the critic, he had as 
 fine a feeling for the sentiment of a picture as for its 
 mastery of technique. 
 
 To all workers in any field that is called art come hours 
 
174 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 when their pursuits seem fantastic and unreal to their very 
 selves : the truths that imagination shapes in her airy 
 forms become air indeed, and all that the picture, the 
 poem, the romance, were created for, dissolves, even to 
 their creator, in the insubstantiality of the medium through 
 which he works. This despair which the philosopher, the 
 thinkf r in the world of facts, can scarcely know, had been 
 very heavy of late in this lonely young girl, with her 
 much pondering on the more tangible forces of life ; and 
 to find no subtlest meaning that she had tried to render in 
 her pictures lost on this critic, and that this order of man 
 gave the kind of recognition that he did to an artist s 
 work, these things were verily to her now like bread to 
 the perishing. Some of the pictures turned to the wall 
 were of her latest work, that she had thus hidden, in very 
 misery to behold them, in the circuit that she had taken 
 around her studio before going down-stairs this morning. 
 And as she turned them out now, one after another, she 
 stood waiting for Mr. Leigh s verdict on each one, much 
 like a child that brings up its task, and stands beaming, 
 wistful, watching to see whether you will approve or no. 
 
 " I suppose it would be more superior not to be so glad 
 to be praised," she broke out suddenly, bethinking herself 
 that she was perhaps plainly showing the pleasure that 
 sl.e felt, as indeed she was, in the gathering radiance of 
 her face. " But I am glad, I am," she repeated naively, 
 as confessing what was perhaps a fault, yet which must be 
 owned in tiuth. "It is so many, many long years that I 
 have been painting pictures, and afraid very often tl.-it 
 they were all good for nothing. I am a great deal older 
 than people think," she added, meeting some gleam in 
 Mr. Leigh s eyes as they turned from the pictures to the 
 young picture of her face. " I shall be twenty-one years 
 old next month." 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 175 
 
 "That is very old indeed," said the man of thirty- 
 four, smiling down on this veteran, who announced her 
 approaching birthday as if it was about her sixtieth. 
 Monny s simplicity was as adorable to him as if he were 
 not the simplest of beings himself. But a man s simplicity 
 ifi never like a woman s, and Kenyon Leigh s was emi 
 nently unlike Monny s. The trait which sometimes gave 
 to his manners an air of bluntness, and disregard of ap 
 pearances and opinion, showed itself in the more gracious 
 maiden in the artless openness with which she betrayed, 
 as now, her sensitiveness to those matters. 
 
 "Men, I suppose, are not so?" she continued inter 
 rogatively, with her persistent solicitude about the mascu 
 line standards. "They do not like to be praised for their 
 well-doing?" 
 
 What she was secretly thinking of was of Mr. Leigh s 
 own exceeding shrinking from praise on the night of the 
 wreck ; and it was quite a satisfaction to her when the 
 unconscious hero, not in the least suspecting what was in 
 her head, yet answered in a way to suggest that there 
 were some directions, after all, in which he was not wholly 
 independent of all the meed of mortals. 
 
 "Surely, in every work that is an effort to interpret 
 truth, men are very much sustained and stimulated by the 
 recognition of others ; and I have been marvelling how 
 any man could have achieved such work as has the painter 
 of these pictures, in such obscurity. Greater than your 
 gifts, greater always than any gift, is the devotion that so 
 cultivates the gift. It is so plain that you have the true 
 artist s passion for perfection, one may dare tell you that 
 the little pictures I have mentioned, those where you 
 attempt least, but where you have developed an admirably 
 pure style, and one absolutely your own, that those ar 
 your best work ; although this Lenorc here" (l.e paused 
 
176 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 before a large canvas, on which was portrayed the maiden 
 riding away with her ghastly lover in Burger s wild bal 
 lad), this, and two or three other such in the room, are 
 the performances that would most astonish the public. 
 And as performances, considering especially the years at 
 which they were painted, they are wholly astonishing." 
 
 " Astonishingly bad," laughed Monny : she could laugh 
 wilh real lightness now at her outgrown work.. " I know 
 the horse is out of drawing, and the lurid lights are im 
 possible, and the man is neither dead nor alive, instead 
 of both dead and alive, as he ought to be. I hoped, 
 myself, the simple pictures you have chosen might not be 
 so full of faults as the others, because I could make thor 
 ough studies for them from the life. But then, about those 
 simple pictures I have had times of being dreadfully 
 afraid that they were not worth doing at all." 
 
 It will be a re-assurance for those times to have the 
 suffrages of others, and be sure you will have them, of a 
 few, as to the rare worth of some of this unpretending 
 work of yours. It is not often that there is any need to 
 urge young talent to make a public venture. But in your 
 case, I am sure it will help, and not harm, the artist. And 
 for the rest of us," added Mr. Leigh, after an instant s 
 hesitation, "if you had not hidden your gifts so deeply, 
 you would not have left a stone-blind, stupid man to fall 
 into what is always a severe mortification, the finding 
 that one has failed to show any honor where honor was 
 very greatly due." 
 
 "You must not think I do not owe a great deal to 
 lessons," said Monny, veiling the little trepidation which 
 these last words caused her by keeping close to the pro 
 fessional question. " I had a very superior master at one 
 time, an artist from Paris, astray in New York for a 
 while, who gave me lessons two whole years, and took 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 177 
 
 the greatest pains with me. Here are some of the very 
 studies I used to do with him," she said, going to a 
 square mahogany table pushed against the wall, a large 
 old-fashioned card-table, piled with sketeh-books, a vari 
 ety of boxes containing art-materials, and two or three 
 great folios of drawings. "If you would like to see 
 them?" she said, looking up, with her hand on the under 
 most one of the folios. 
 
 " Certainly. I should like to see any thing, every 
 thing, that will account for you at all." 
 
 Mi. Leigh knew very well that only genius would 
 account for Monny , but he was extremely glad to look 
 over the drawings, as it was a business capable of much 
 prolonging : so, as Monny sat down at one side of the 
 table, he seated himself at another, and began to examine 
 the old studies she had done at school with the master of 
 whom Mrs. Doan, had before told him. 
 
 It was a very long while since that particular folio had 
 been opened, and Monny had no precise idea of its con 
 tents ; but, giving it directly into Mr. Leigh s hand, she 
 sat quietly by herself while he drew out in turn, and 
 examined, the miscellaneous collection with which it was 
 stuffed. Somewhere in the course of this survey he came 
 upon a certain half-painted picture in oils of a youth 
 about twenty, painted cabinet-size, on a piece of prepared 
 board such as artists use. This picture, as it appeared, 
 drew from Mr. Leigh the exclamation, " What a hand 
 some young cdballerQl" 
 
 Monuy s eyes, from where she sat, had fallen on the 
 sketch with the same merely ascertaining glance, to see 
 what it was, that sin- bestowed on whatever Mr. Lcijjh 
 took out of the long-forgotten folio ; but she made no 
 answer to his remark, and he observed that her glnnet! 
 just then wandered off into a very absent gaze. 
 
178 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 A slighter-natured girl than Monny she herself, prob 
 ably, a week later would have blushed to have this 
 picture, representing what it did in her history, fall so 
 unexpectedly into the hands of the man who sat by the 
 table. But the constant, delicate color that made so 
 lovely her soft cheeks neither deepened nor paled now ; 
 the dreaming eyes showed no trace of disturbance ; her 
 attitude only took some peculiar stillness, as of one who 
 
 llS c DS. 
 
 Long was it before Mr. Leigh laid down that sketch, 
 i\ot because of its artistic merit : it was plainly a piece 
 of Monny s early, immature work, and he had noted it at 
 first only because of the superb type of physical beauty 
 that the face represented. Perhaps because that type 
 seemed to him so wholly un-American, or because of the 
 highly romantic pose and air that the very young hand 
 which had painted it had given to the figure, he did not 
 at all imagine the sketch to be a portrait, nor did it even 
 occur to him tliat his taking of it out now had any con 
 nection with the revery into which Monny had fallen. 
 But it was that revery which made him sit motionless 
 himself, his eyes apparently occupied with the piece of 
 painted board before him, although, after the first glance, 
 he was really not seeing at all the handsome youth por 
 trayed thereon. 
 
 He ras seeing, with those mysterious glances which 
 see while they appear directed to another object, the rapt 
 away face of the maiden as she sat in the morning light. 
 It streamed full upon her from the front windows of the 
 apartment, the table being against the side of the room, 
 her seat near the wall, while, Mr. Leigh s position being 
 rather diagonal to hers across the table, his back was 
 partly towards the light: he never forgot any detail of 
 this scene. What was to burn these moments into his 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 179 
 
 memory forever was yet hid from him : in their passing 
 they filled consciousness to the brim, not with anguish, 
 but delight, that large delight which lifts the soul in 
 knowing that the being beloved is worthy of all beloving. 
 Whether this joy would ever hold any personal hope for 
 himself or not, it was still a joy which made the lover 
 almost forbear to breathe, lest he should break the dream 
 which touched that young face with the same sweet mus 
 ing seriousness that he had so often seen it wear before, 
 and marvelled how so light a creature could have so deep 
 a look. u Stone-blind and stupid" indeed, he seemed 
 to himself to have been : yet his old sense of mystery 
 about this maiden was but enhanced, transformed ; in her 
 every movement to him now was a kind of sacred won 
 der. What was she listening to ? What was she seeing 
 with those dreaming eyes ? 
 
 Well, Monny in these moments was really listening, 
 listening to a long-ago echo from her past, certain re 
 membered strains of dance-music in a high-bannered hall, 
 where martial emblems were of right, and morning faces. 
 A nation s nursery of heroes it was, and heroes that 
 should be, looked the gallant young figures, brave in uni 
 form, graceful in their young slimness as the maidens who 
 went whirling with them in all that splendor of light and 
 flowers and music which makes such enchantment of a 
 girl s first bull. 
 
 Yes, it was Monny s first ball (it had come, by certain 
 chances, when she was a mere schoolgirl, not formally 
 out) which had risen on her vision when the minister took 
 out that picture ; and what she was chiefly striving to see 
 with those intent eyes was her own self of five years 
 before. Outwardly she had not greatly changed. The 
 young girl whom she saw waltzing on and on in that ftying 
 throng, with one partner always coming to claim her 
 
180 A KEVEHENB IDOL. 
 
 anew as the music beat wilder and sweeter measures with 
 every latening hour between that girl s face and this 
 maiden s, who mused so fair in the morning light, time 
 had as yet marked no difference so wide that Mcnny 
 should find such difficulty in realizing that vision of the 
 ball-room as indeed herself. But it was not her outei self 
 of the past that she was thinking of : it was the inner 
 being, her notions of life at that period, her conception 
 of men and things, that horizon of the mind may sweep 
 through vast changes between the ages of sixteen and 
 twenty-one ; and it was her sense of these altered meas 
 urements which made it so hard for her to identify her 
 present self with that girl of sixteen. 
 
 Now, the words which we shall have to put down as 
 Monny s first utterance when she woke out of the remi 
 niscences that I have indicated will be considered, doubt 
 less, as a shining example of feminine inconsequence : 
 nevertheless, her mind had travelled logically (being a 
 woman s) to just the subject which she introduced. 
 
 There had been something in that backward look into 
 the past to make her vividly contrast her ideas of then 
 and now as to what was admirable in masculine character ; 
 and Mr. Leigh at this moment made a nearer move into 
 what may be called her regard than he had ever done 
 before. Simultaneously with this feeling came a solicitude 
 that the man who had approved her work should approve 
 also herself. The deathless feminine wish to be thought 
 well of personally by the being whose opinion is valued 
 for one s talents moved her instinctively to put in a little 
 plea for herself in a direction where she thought she had 
 been at a disadvantage in Kenyon Leigh s eyes. So, 
 turning those dreaming orbs back upon him, she began 
 gravely, 
 
 " I have learned lately," he looked up, expecting to 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 181 
 
 hear of some new form of art that she had been studying, 
 "I have learned lately, a little to cook. I should not 
 burn the steak up now." 
 
 At this solemn announcement Mr. Leigh burst out 
 laughing. The tension of will with whieh he had been 
 holding emotion in check ever since Moniiy came up 
 stairs was too suddenly relaxed for him to help it. 
 
 "Truly I should not," Monny repeated, taking this 
 merriment as a sign of some scepticism about her new 
 accomplishment. " I have practised all the common 
 kinds of cooking for all the meals with Mrs. Doane. And 
 she said I learned quicker than than some girls," said 
 Monny ; which was putting very mildly indeed Mrs. 
 Doane s commendation of her quickness. But the young 
 lady advanced even this bit of self-praise only in her 
 eagerness to stand well with her new mentor. 
 
 "Very extraordinary that you should," the mentor 
 replied, still laughing. Mouny s want of culinary skill 
 had not been one of the items which had made him decide 
 her an impossible wife. 4t Very extraordinary that a brain 
 which has mastered the difficulties of such an art as 
 yours should be apter to learn than the thick skull of 
 some ignorant Irish girl," a view of things which cer 
 tainly implies that Mr. Leigh was a more advanced 
 philosopher than some of his contemporaries. 
 
 "Were the dinners last week," said Monny, brighten 
 ing, " were they worse than usual ? " she asked bash 
 fully, intending no slur on the dinners of the house, only 
 desiring to present modestly her part in them. 
 
 4 I have no fault to find with Mrs. Doane s dinners, 
 ex< ;pt being left to eat them so much alone," ventured 
 the gentleman boarder. 
 
 " I cooked two of them all by myself," announced the 
 young lady boarder, u without any directions, I mean, 
 
182 A KEVEREND IDOL, 
 
 with Susannah only helping me : I was head cook. And 
 all the other clays I helped Susannah and Mrs. Doane." 
 
 Between the one sensation of finding that he had igno- 
 rantly eaten dinners cooked by those sacred hands, and 
 the other sensation of learning that there really were some 
 causes beside total abhorrence of himself that had kept 
 Monny away from the table of late, Mr. Leigh was speech 
 less ; and, before he could recover himself, his interlocutor 
 went on, 
 
 " 1 could never be so sorry to spoil any picture as I was 
 to spoil the steak for those poor hungry men when there was 
 no more steak in the house. But it was not my fondness for 
 art that made me so ignorant," she said, having in mind 
 all the homilies she had been reading on woman s sphere. 
 "I could have learned to cook too (it is very simple) ; 
 and I would have learned long ago, if I had thought about 
 it before. Truly," she pleaded, opening her earnest eyes 
 on Mr. Leigh, as if she stood at the bar of the whole 
 masculine world, entreating its fair mind on woman s 
 case, "truly, it was not because I despised the useful 
 duties of life that I took to painting pictures. I began 
 when I was much too little to know any thing about those 
 distinctions. I cannot remember any time in my life when 
 I did not try to make pictures ; only if I had not had some 
 good lessons after a while, if Monsieur Durocher had 
 not come, I think I should have gone on making the 
 wildest waste of time and strength, trying to do all the 
 impossible things for which I was not prepared by any 
 knowledge. I think that is the kind of work that strains 
 and wears you out ; not hard study under good masters, 
 but to work blind, and untaught in all the necessary ruka 
 that you can hardly find out for yourself, except by such 
 long ways as use up all your force in just discovering the 
 bare methods of good work. And soj it seems to me, 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 183 
 
 thorough training is profitable for women too," argue i 
 Monny, encouraged to deliver her burdened mind by the 
 attention of the court. 
 
 " Not that I am a worthy example myself, in art or 
 any thing else," she went on. "I have been full of all 
 wrong ideas, which I did not get over, even after I had 
 lessons of Monsieur Durocher : there were many false 
 ideas that I seemed to have to grow beyoncj, all by myself. 
 I mean, art used to be to me, above all things, a way of 
 escaping from the every-day world to a more romantic 
 one : I thought real life prosy and humdrum, and not 
 worth painting, especially in America. But later I came 
 to see how much beauty there is in every-day things every 
 where, all the fine and noble moments there are in what 
 seem very common lives ; and then I began to try to paint 
 pictures that would bring these truths out a little. And 
 since the real world is where we have to live, and where 
 we ought to live, satisfied and believing, I thought, if I 
 could paint any little picture that would help to show 
 those things clearer, perhaps that might be called a kind 
 of usefulness too." Having expressed which diffident 
 hope that she might not fall wholly short of woman s 
 prime duty to be useful, Monny suddenly paused, fearing, 
 that, in her explanatory eagerness, she had grown quite 
 incoherent and tiresome. 
 
 But the present listener would have found Monny s 
 words perfectly intelligible and profoundly interesting, 
 if they had been much more broken than they were : 
 hearkening to them indeed, and watching the expressive 
 young face of the speaker, he had a sense of making 
 acquaintance with some entirely new form of heroism. 
 A man able to know that a certain quality of attainment 
 in art, no matter what the native genius, represents always 
 such a long scorning of delights, and living of laborious 
 
184 A REVEREND IDOI* 
 
 days, as may be called heroic at twenty-one years, 
 Kenyon Leigh found something very touching in this fail 
 creature to whom delights so beckoned, making her artist s 
 battle ; while added to all its difficulty was this mysterious 
 feminine trouble lest her desert should be counted hei 
 demerit. 
 
 In this sympathetic mood he probably found something 
 vastly consoling to say concerning life s various fields of 
 usefulness : certainly, as he answered Monny s last words, 
 her face went brightening on into some fulness of satis 
 faction which could only have arisen from laying hold at 
 last of a lively hope that to be a good artist did not neces 
 sarily imply a poor kind of a woman. While this talk 
 went on, shrill blew the departing whistle of the ten o clock 
 train from the railway-station of the village, and the Rev. 
 Kenyon Leigh was not on board. 
 
 And had this pair really done misunderstanding each 
 other? 
 
A EEVEREND IDOL. 135 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 
 CERTAINLY they seemed to understand each otbei 
 marvellously well iu the now ensuing days. What 
 ever deep correspondences were in these two beings hy 
 nature, and there were very deep ones, it might have 
 been expected that education would still have separated 
 them too widely for much that could strictly be called 
 mental sympathy. Yet they talked together by the hour ; 
 and although any one who had known well the Kenyon 
 Leigh of old would have perceived, perhaps, that this new 
 man made love to Monny with every breath, still lover s 
 words were as yet what he dared not venture on : so 
 something besides variations of "My angel" must have 
 made up at present this exhaustless conversation. 
 
 Certainly the girl did not know the things that the 
 ripely educated man, thirteen years her senior, knew, in 
 any such way as he knew them. But it is not nearly so 
 much inequality of mere attainment as a difference in the 
 entire mental habit, which is wont to put such a gulf 
 intellectually between even very bright girls and men of 
 thought and masculine culture. This bright girl, as to 
 her nominal education, had had a very flimsy one. Pri 
 vate governesses had taught her in childhood (they are 
 not, in America, the learned class of female teachers, as 
 a rule ; and the instructresses of Aunt Helen s choice did 
 not make the exception) : later, Monny had been placed 
 at an ultra-fashionable, ultra-expensive, New- York board 
 ing-school, where nothing was really well taught but the 
 
186 A REVEREND EDOL. 
 
 French language and dancing. Mrs. Slab well had the 
 most sincerely good intentions in thus schooling her niece. 
 In that lady s ears the very words " female college," not 
 to mention any such wild innovation as a " mixed college," 
 had a startling sound. Such institutions all the newer 
 schools, in fact, aiming at a more solid education for 
 women than had been usual in Mrs. Slabwell s girlhood 
 the matron had utterly ignored in selecting schools for her 
 own daughters, having a suspicion of something a little 
 too miscellaneous in the class from which these ambitious 
 students came, a little crude and rude, not to say revo 
 lutionary, in the very atmosphere where such strong 
 knowledge was absorbed by women : still less was this 
 radical atmosphere to be thought of for the book-loving, 
 art-gifted, young Monny ; since any especial endowment 
 of brains in a girl, the lady considered, had a native 
 tendency to the abnormal and dangerous. So the New- 
 York boarding-school befell Monny, with the two well- 
 taught branches. But as thoroughly to master the French 
 tongue is really a w r ork of no mean mental discipline, arid 
 as Monny did attain to that end by grace of this school, 
 learning to speak and write the language there with rare 
 purity and ease, and as she learned also to dance like a 
 sylph, with but very small tax on her time, more utterly 
 fruitless places, in the way of young ladies schools, might 
 easily have befallen her tlum this ornamental establish 
 ment, which actually attended to two ornaments with thor 
 oughness. -Moreover, there came to her in the New-York 
 school the great educational good fortune of her life, a 
 real master in art. 
 
 This wandering Frenchman, who, in the declining yours 
 of an unsuccessful life, had drifted over to America 
 a while, had in himself every requisite of a great artist, 
 except that last combina/ion of qualities which makes 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 187 
 
 origii.al genius. He was a master of all mere technical 
 skill in painting, and he had a lofty ideal. The divine 
 spark which he found in such preposterous lodging as the 
 breast of an American boarding-school miss, he set him 
 self to guard the more fiercely, because he considered it 
 doubly exposed to extinction both by reason of Mouny s 
 nationality and of her sex. An American was to the 
 Frenchman a raw, hasty, superficial creature, the last 
 of beings to make an artist, and a girl something beyond 
 the last. Nevertheless, the spark was there ; he recog 
 nized it : so, all the more because of the small chance he 
 saw for it to live, he fostered it with a kind of furious 
 fidelity, as Monuy herself had said. Her guardian sup 
 plying her liberally with money to gratify this as any 
 other harmless whim, not only was Monny enabled to 
 recompense her master, who would have bestowed his 
 time on this extraordinary pupil whether she could have 
 paid him or not, but her master was enabled to obtain for 
 her many valuable facilities for study, even in her board 
 ing-school surroundings. 
 
 So this precariously taught girl had had, in one direction 
 at least, some true and systematic training ; and the habit 
 of accuracy, of patient searching after truth, which she 
 had acquired in her study of art, doubtless went some 
 where into all the other studies which she apparently pur 
 sued, after such a random and superficial manner, through 
 her miscellaneous reading of books. For her general 
 culture seemed, to a highly cultivated man. of astonishing 
 extent and solidity for her years : aside from a lover s 
 fancy, her mere attainments were probably not astonish- 
 ing at all in the sense of their being beyond what anj 
 bright girl should be equal to. 
 
 The art in which Monny had creative power was one 
 whose labors were necessarily ended with daylight : her 
 
188 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 school- tasks had been, for the most part, so shallow, she 
 had skimmed . them lightly and in the briefest spaces of 
 time, and at school, as elsewhere, gone on always read 
 ing ; then, in times when it was impossible to command 
 the more concentrated mood required for all inventive 
 labors sufficiently to work at her easel, a book could still 
 be taken up ; so, even amid all the distractions of society 
 incident to her career as a young lady, she had still done 
 much reading. We pause over this matter ; because, 
 although the girl of whom we write was a young lady of 
 leisure, on whose so-called schooling much money had 
 been spent, it was still a fact that all which was most 
 valuable in her general education had come through what 
 could be called " studies at home," pursued in odd mo 
 ments. 
 
 One sees, by the way, in the newspapers, some occa 
 sional notice of a certain Boston society by that name, 
 to guide American girls in their reading. All the present 
 writer knows of that society is such notices : but I think 
 no woman who can look back from even a few years of 
 maturity, to see in what beggary and blindness as to all 
 the vital sources of knowledge her own school-course left 
 her, I think no such woman can hear of that society 
 without recognizing in it one of the most needed and 
 practicable of all the new efforts for helping her sex to 
 wider knowledge ; for, schooled or unschooled, the nor 
 mal course of women s lives will still make, for the very 
 large majority of them, studies at home, pursued at 
 interrupted times, their main hope of real culture. Nor 
 is this hope, when once rightly seized, at all a barren 
 one. 
 
 Young Monny Rivers certainly had been fortunate 
 above many another in having had from the beginning 
 all the books she wanted, and in having escaped also, 
 
A REVEKEND IDOL. 189 
 
 in very large measure, all that kind of mental tasidng, 
 which, doing little to strengthen the brains, does a great 
 deal to exhaust them, "mocking and deluding with ragged 
 notions and babblements of learning, instead of worthy 
 and delightful knowledge," as John Milton describes the 
 school-cramming of his da} . As there is evidence that 
 thin cramming is monstrously on the increase since his 
 time, and that there is a particular!} 7 barren- form of it 
 particularly rife in American schools for girls as well a a 
 boys, worse fates might well have befallen our heroine 
 than an aunt Helen through whose beneficent folly this 
 unworn young brain had had leisure to find out for itself, 
 without a society, how to make some fruitful studies at 
 home. No one will pretend that this unguided reading 
 of a girl was the best possible education for her; only 
 that she had absorbed from it much knowledge which was 
 worthy and delightful knowledge, and not the utterly 
 disjointed notions and babblements of school text-books 
 with which so many a bright girl s education seems to 
 end. She was not learned : but she had some cultured 
 sense to discern between the good and the spurious in the 
 literature of which she had read so much ; she had an 
 oager passion to know, to attain to clear ideas and just 
 views, that she might base her young life on them ; and 
 she had some adequate notion of the conditions of search 
 and study by which these are attained. She could be 
 called, therefore, an educated being. The man wrio 
 found her mind so interesting was certainly much more 
 educated ; but the very crudity which was uecesszirily in 
 her thoughts on many subjects, the girlish speech in which 
 she expressed them, was charming to him, since the 
 crudity was of a sort that ripens, and which has ao 
 attractive freshness even in its immaturity. 
 
 There may be readers who will find prosings on educa- 
 
190 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 tion and the like quite intolerably out of place just here, 
 since it is well understood that love is a madness, and the 
 genuine lover in a .state of total inability to discern 
 whether the charmer talks sense or nonsense. We assure 
 them that we are not at all impugning this general theory : 
 our only point is, that this particular lover had such a 
 prejudice in favor of reason, he was liable to lucid inter 
 vals. And in these intervals he was such a fearful 
 bungler in all make-believe arts, he could hardly have 
 been trusted to keep up successfully the pretence of find 
 ing folly and wisdom all the same thing, especially as 
 the young woman in the case was visited by rather pene 
 trative flashes of insight into the secret minds of men who 
 made love to her. It seems to us fortunate, therefore, 
 that there were some rational topics of conversation mu 
 tually possible to this particular pair. Moreover, a man 
 does not usually appear to his best advantage when he is 
 taken too violently out of all his natural modes of speech 
 and lines of reflection ; and, since Miss Monny had be 
 come so desperately charming to our hero, we suppose 
 that all who wish him well will desire that he should now 
 become equally charming to her. I do not know whether 
 Kenyon Leigh was of the class of professed conversation 
 alists or not ; he was a man whose life was very largely 
 lived in thought ; he was accustomed to express his 
 thoughts in words : what he had to say, therefore, on 
 thoughtful subjects, could scarcely have failed to be inter 
 esting. It is certain that all which he said and did and 
 was grew ever more and more interesting to young Monny 
 Rivers. Indeed, this man and maiden were so utterly 
 unlike, and yet so deeply akin, they had but to show 
 themselves as they really were, to speak their own natural 
 language, to find each in the other a supreme charm. 
 And so, through all these wise conversations on imper- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 101 
 
 sonal subjects, they grew so well acquainted ut last, that 
 there came an afternoon when they had a little conversa 
 tion somewhat personal and highly foolish. This dialogue 
 it will be the need of our tale to report. All that wise 
 and edifying discourse on themes ethical, aesthetical, and 
 philosophical, which filled the long hours that the pair had 
 spent together before the afternoon when this foolish little 
 dialogue befell, will have to pass unrecorded. It will be 
 understood that those talks were as deep as the small-talk 
 which we are about to note is shallow. Yet, since the 
 most momentous waves of human life often widen from 
 some idlest little pebble of word or deed which the merest 
 sportive chance has tossed into the current of things, in 
 telling the tale even of a serious man, we must pass over 
 his thoughtful words to give his trifling ones in some 
 detail. 
 
 The place was the minister s study, and the time some 
 where in the long summer afternoon following the early 
 dinner-hour of half-past one. Miss Monny usually made 
 whatever change she made from her morning toilet during 
 the day, after, instead of before, that meal, adopting 
 the rural fashion. The minister had a notion that she 
 was about this pleasing duty now, and he was listening 
 to hear her chamber-door open, planning to beguile her 
 into bestowing her society on him a while, before resum 
 ing work in her studio. His own domain the young lady 
 was still sufficiently shy of entering to make some strategy 
 necessary to bring her there. So he had spread out on 
 his study-table at this hour certain matters which we will 
 assume to be objects of interest. But whether they were 
 old engravings, curious books, or remarkable specimens 
 of seaweed that he had picked up in his morning ramble, 
 we need not pause to inquire ; for, whatever the exhibi 
 tion was, rt was the merest pretext to insnare the visitor. 
 
192 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Well, the deep trap was got ready : there was> i little 
 echo from the maiden s door-latch, a soft rustle of skirts 
 in the entry, the minister appeared on his threshold, and 
 " Will you walk into my parlor? said the spider to 
 the fly." 
 
 The fly came walking in. Whether or no it was the 
 prettiest of little parlors, it certainly was one of the pret 
 tiest of little flies, quite especially so this afternoon. It 
 had got its hair up since dinner with some bewildering 
 ne?r grace : there was a gleam of gold chain about its 
 neck. Its gown seemed to the man of the study, with its 
 shimmering white and faint azure, to be made out of a 
 piece of the summer-afternoon sky ; but more prosaic 
 observers would have perceived that it was only a demi- 
 toilet of pale-blue underdress, hair-striped summer silk, 
 with a white overdress of very fine embroidered Swiss 
 muslin moderately frilled with lace. On one of the roll 
 ing folds in which the front of this snowy overdress was 
 caught back had lodged some little gossamer waif, of a 
 golden-brown color ; which alien substance the admiring 
 observer of Monny s afternoon toilet bent respectfully 
 forward to remove. lie found it rather a mysterious 
 "substance, something that might have been tiny locks of 
 Monny s curling hair, which had thus shed themselves 
 down on her gown : only hair did not usually fall out in 
 exactly that way, at least, not from a man s scalp ; viz., 
 in a little strip of woven fringe about an inch and a half 
 wide and twice that number of inches long. 
 
 " Oh, my rainy-day friz ! It must have dropped out of 
 the box when I put away my morning switch. I lid 
 forgotten I had that friz," said Monny, looking down, and 
 blushing a little that Mr. Leigh should have found any 
 speck of disorder about her toilet. As for blushing at 
 being detected in the use of artificial aids to hair-dressing, 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 193 
 
 women were quite past blushing for this cause at the 
 period of our tale, the year 1*7-, when the somewhat 
 Fijian immensity of chignon which lias so prevailed during 
 the last decade had reached its most swollen proportion? 
 preparatory to a re-action in favor of the present simpler 
 styles of arranging hair. 
 
 Rainy-day friz ! morning switches ! To the dazed mas 
 culine being who still held that atom of commercial hair 
 l^twe.en his thumb and forefinger, these words suggested 
 a whole assortment of such lendings. Monny s morning 
 hair, then, was a kind of second-best variety, that she had 
 just taken off to put on the contents of another box. 
 
 I confess at this moment the heart of his biographer 
 does a little ache for Kenyon Leigh ; for, although he was 
 not of those lovers who count up with a kind of apprais 
 er s eye the " points " of the fair one whom they favor, 
 he had observed the beauty of Monny s hair, and it 
 chanced to be so arranged this afternoon, that, if any of it 
 was put on, really the whole of it must be. So as his 
 unpractised eyes now turned the first investigating glance 
 of his life on a lady s head to see where nature ended, 
 and art began, and could find no possible joining-place, 
 what could he conclude, having understood that these 
 things were managed to deceive the very elect, but that 
 ins beloved wore a solid wig? 
 
 Well, even under this startling hypothesis he stood 
 firm : he still preferred Monny, hairless (but for the 
 shops) , to any other woman whose hair should sweep the 
 ground. Vuvie was presently rewarded in this man, as 
 surely such virtue ought to be. Monny s tresses certainly 
 never made a more luxuriant display than they did this 
 afternoon, and there was not a hair on her head at this 
 moment that was not growing quick out of the live cuticle 
 that covered her ridiculous young skull. Ridiculous, 1 
 
194 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 suppose, philosophy must pronounce the head, which, 
 being provided by Nature with so bountiful and beautiful 
 a covering as was Monny s, yet buys unto itself a switch, 
 and at certain times and seasons actually wears it. But 
 this absurd young daughter of the nineteenth century and 
 its Fijian decade stood smiling tranquilly away there in 
 the speechless face of the man as she said, 
 
 " Oh ! you do not like switches I remember." 
 
 What Monny mistily remembered at the moment was 
 sitting on the doorsteps once, with Clara Macey s switch, 
 and being very pert to Mr. Leigh, in some old days which 
 seemed so far off and impossible now. She wondered 
 exactly how odious she had been at that time. The recol 
 lection somehow prompted her to go on now with a little 
 winsome tone of arguing, 
 
 u But truly, switches are a great convenience in the 
 morning, when you are in a hurry to get to work right 
 away, and do not want to spend the time to stuff yourself 
 up with combs." 
 
 " To stuff with combs," repeated Mr. Leigh so help 
 lessly, Monny clapped her fair hand on her crown with an 
 expository gesture as she said, " This way, you see." 
 
 The beholder so evidently did not see, the maid, laugh 
 ing and blushing, pulled up to view a high back comb, 
 over which she had heaped the soft masses of her hair to 
 the fashionable altitude of the day. Monny had, in fact, 
 curled all her hair in the morning in its own natural curls, 
 and then loosely gathered them, while still damp from the 
 brush, into a long invisible net. This informal little 
 coiffure of the morning she had changed by simply pulling 
 off the net, and arranging her curls, which had dried in 
 all manner of graceful shapes in the confining net, high 
 on the top of her head, leaving a few of them to fall free, 
 while the others were looped over and around the comb 
 
A KEVEREND IDOL. 195 
 
 Also she had enhanced the slight natural waves of her 
 hair by winding its front locks on two crimping-pins. 
 Being less dependent on these implements than girls with 
 naturally straight hair, she had not put them in over night 
 at all, but only for a few hours in the morning, laying her 
 switch round in a braid to hide them. 
 
 Any woman on reading the above description, which we 
 trust we have made explicit enough to satisfy the most 
 earnest inquirer, will at once perceive that the heroine s 
 hair in the afternoon, when she wore only her own, would 
 make twice the display that it did in the morning, when 
 she wore also a switch. The hero, however had not quite 
 mastered yet this new mathematics, in which to take away 
 was to add, and vice versa. We return, therefore, to his 
 case by stating that the foundation of this airy architec 
 ture of crimps and curls which Monny had built up on her 
 head for the afternoon, being the comb, she had not 
 moved it with impunity : some hair-pins fell out, and, 
 after an ineffectual attempt to refasten the comb, down 
 fell the whole shining cloud of tresses, and, lo ! not a hair 
 of them fell off. 
 
 Fortunately this lover had held so fast to the woman 
 through all the fluctuations of her hair, there had been no 
 violent transitions in his face as one moment he mentally 
 saw every fibre of Monny s hair vanish into a box, and the 
 next moment its restoration in this indubitably genuine 
 magnificence which now tumbled down over the maiden s 
 shoulders. Still some atom of a gleam did come into his 
 face as that spectre of the wig was so utterly abolished, 
 - a look which made the wondering girl say, 
 
 * Oh ! did you suppose this hair came off too? Oh, no ! 
 This will pull," she laughed, winding her hand in her 
 fleecy mane, and giving a vigorously demonstrative jerk 
 to the head on which it grew. 
 
196 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 "The proof is not satisfactory, * said Mr. Leigh with 
 affected solemnity of tone, as he gravely advanced, per 
 ceiving how a lover s opportunity could be stolen to lay a 
 hand on that sacred head. " In all serious tests it is cus 
 tomary to allow the audience to pull." 
 
 Like a frolicsome kid, Moiiny butted out her pretty head 
 for a consenting second, but she shied bashfully away 
 again when the coveted privilege was scarce tasted ; and, 
 pajtly because she was a little fluttered by these new 
 familiarities, she ran out of the room, saying, "I will 
 show you my switch." 
 
 Back she presently walked with that thing of folly in her 
 hand, and held it out to Tertullian, a nice little straight 
 switch, matching her own locks in color. He took it with 
 a delicious sense of becoming very intimate with Monny. 
 Intimacy with Monny was by no means easy to establish, 
 for all her frankness, and often childlike absence of punc 
 tilio. She was emphatically a maiden who was at once 
 near, and very far. And, really, conversations ethical, 
 sesthetical, and philosophical, had never brought quite 
 that nearness, that enchanting sense of domesticity, which 
 the man felt in being honored with these confidences 
 about the switch. So he examined that object in his 
 hand with most respectful attention, even discovering the 
 three tails whereof it was composed, the tiny loop whereby 
 the humbug was pinned on. 
 
 "You see it is neat and dean as can be," argued the 
 young lady, composed now with all that calm abstraction 
 which naturally belongs to the logical frame of mind. 
 "It is not nasty heaps, nor graveyard hair, at all, as 
 the satirical writers say. You would suppose, from the 
 way those writers talk, that we went shearing the heads 
 of poor dead women all in their sepulchres to get our 
 switches, that we were a kind of ghouls and body- 
 snatchers." 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 197 
 
 She looked so unlike a ghoul, with her bright, bright 
 face blooming out of the lace neck-ruffle of that sweet 
 gown, the listener could but smile. But the maid went on 
 with all the seriousness of one who has the correct infor 
 mation to diffuse on a much misunderstood subject, 
 
 44 The real fact is, that the false hair is all cut from the 
 heads of live women ; and the women like to sell it so as 
 to have the money, in Germany, and the other countries 
 where their hair grows so fast, and they do not have the 
 American climate to make it fall out and grow thin so 
 early do you truly think switches arc a great weakness 
 and folly?" the debater suddenly broke off, her mind 
 including just now under the word " switches " the whole 
 subject of woman s personal adornment, all the feminine 
 fondness for pleasing array. 
 
 " Have I not just been taught that any one who should 
 so slander this commodity," returned the gentleman, ten 
 derly stroking the switch, "would only prove his crass 
 ignorance of the great laws which have created com 
 merce ? excess of product in one zone, and deficiency in 
 another. But as I see one American head which the 
 climate appears to have spared 
 
 44 Oh ! " laughed Monny, winding one hand in the flow 
 ing ringlets which Mr. Leigh s teasing glance surveyed 
 alternately with that superfluity of a switch which he still 
 held, " my hair is not so very thick. It is a kind of hair 
 that puffs out when it is loose, but all goes to nothing 
 when it is done up in solid braids." And she illustrated 
 the noiningness by giving a tight twist to the tresses in 
 her .hand, which, indeed, having the silken fineness of 
 fibre belonging to some varieties of curling hair, made 
 much less show in braids than hair of a coarser quality. 
 
 "Except for causing suffering Germany to languish in 
 her commerce, I should say, then, it was a kind of hair 
 
198 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 that ought never to be done up in solid braids," returned 
 the man, secretly reluctant to see that sweet shaken hair 
 wound up again. 
 
 " Oh, everlasting curls are so monotonous ! " replied the 
 maid. 
 
 u Monotonous ! " murmured Monny s admirer, wonder 
 ing what about Monny could ever deserve that name. 
 Then, merely to stir her up anew on the subject which 
 kept her sitting so near, making those fascinating exposi 
 tions as to how she did up her hair, he held up that almost 
 invisible morsel of a rainy-day friz, looking from it to the 
 head of the girl, whose own sunny locks hung on her 
 temples like a golden fleece, as he asked, " And where, 
 where, where, do you bestow this miserable string? " 
 
 " Oh, I never wear that at all ! " said Monny, dimpling. 
 c That is how I forgot it was in the box. I bought it, 
 thinking I might want it some time. All the girls have 
 them, for a convenience, when they are going to parties 
 in the evening." The secret fact was, that Monny had 
 a little personal dislike of false frisettes, as she made a 
 distinction herself between stuffing out one s back hair, 
 and wearing foreign locks dropping over the very fore 
 head : still, since " the girls " wore them, she was bound 
 to defend frisettes also. So she went on, u You see, you 
 can crimp your own hair to look much prettier than any 
 of those false crimps." 
 
 " Yes. I see that perfectly," replied the man, survey 
 ing the golden crinkling cloud which Monny s own hair 
 made at this moment over her brow. 
 
 " So, of course," the maid went on, much too abs< xbed 
 in the general argument to note an} 7 complimentary per 
 sonal allusions, "if you are going to a party in the 
 evening, you wish to save your own crimps fresh for that 
 occasion. And it would be truly silly to shut yourself 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 199 
 
 up till evening, and still worse to show yourself, even 
 al>out your own house, not fit to be seen, in crimping- 
 pins." 
 
 "Certainly," responded the auditor, with the gravity 
 which he felt to be expected of him. 
 
 44 So you have a false frisette, and you put that on in 
 the morning, right over your crimping-pins, with a little 
 ribbon or a braid ; and there you arc, all nice for the 
 whole day, and your own hair snug underneath in crimps, 
 ready to be taken down for the evening. I mean all this, 
 of course, when the weather is moist, which takes out 
 most crimps, except the false ones. Then, some of the 
 girls," added this expositor, wishing to make an exhaus 
 tive review of her subject, " have a rainy-day hat, with 
 false frizzes sewed round inside the brim. But I think 
 that is a little too barefaced ; because, if your hat should 
 happen to blow off, it would give men a chance to 
 laugh." 
 
 " I think so," replied the present representative of that 
 sex, exploding with laughter, as Monny s revelations at 
 this point, and especially the air of serious reasoning with 
 which they were made, became too much for him. 
 
 4 Do you dislike these things very much?" asked the 
 girl, still solicitously, of the amused man. 
 
 u On the contrary. Their utility has been so ably 
 argued to me, that I think of buying one of tJtese things, 
 to begin small, for myself," declared Mr. Leigh, holding 
 up the imponderable bit of frisette. "I think the kind 
 that is sewed inside the hat will be the most convenient 
 arrangement for me. Since you do not wear this, can 
 you not lend it to me, to show in the shops as a sample 
 of the goods I want V 
 
 All lovers will talk some nonsense which sounds not 
 very brilliant in the repeating ; and these nonsensical 
 
200 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 words of the Rev. Kenyon Leigh were merely uttered as a 
 cover to his serious intent of retaining the article whicn he 
 had vilified as a "miserable string," the same suddenly 
 striking him as a precious keepsake, since it belonged to 
 Monny. " You really have no use for it? " he repeated. 
 
 "No," replied Monny, the smile which had gleamed 
 across her face at the fancy of a row of frisette curls 
 bobbing round Mr. Leigh s manly brows, becoming a 
 little bashful, as she said, il But I had some crimping- 
 pins in this morning my own self, and the switch worn 
 forward, in a coronet braid, to hide them. That is one 
 use for switches ; and then I wear mine in other ways. 
 I really wear it very often when I braid up my hair." 
 
 Here, certainly, was an excellent opportunity for the 
 minister to exhort the young lady, over whom he had so 
 much influence at present, to set an example to her insane 
 sex by wearing her hair au naturel thenceforth. But 
 probably he was in that state of mind about Monny, that 
 her veriest follies were charming to him ; or it may be 
 that he had secretly found a very sweet young dignity in 
 the air of Monny s head with all that pufling-up of its 
 beautiful hair, made by the crhnping-pins and the skilful 
 placing of the high-topped comb (the Fijian style in its 
 worst enormity was really capable of being made a grace 
 by some women, and that was what kept it going). 
 
 Certain it was that he still smiled so tolerantly at all 
 these confessions, that the maiden added, with her abid 
 ing desire to show her sex in a fair light, " And many of 
 the girls have switches of their real own hair. I mean 
 hair cut from their very own heads." 
 
 "But this is not such?" returned the man, who was 
 attaining to such critical judgment in switches as to per 
 ceive that the hair in his hand was scarcely of so fine a 
 fibre as Monny s own soft locks. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 201 
 
 u No : that was bought in a store/ replied the girl. 
 " 1 have never had my hair cut off at its full length but 
 once ; and then it was lost," she added hastily. 
 
 "Lost! And can it not be found?" involuntarily 
 asked the lover, feeling as if priceless treasure had beer, 
 cast aw a} . 
 
 "Oh, no, no! it was lost in a trunk. I was travel 
 ling," replied Monny still more hastily. And with these 
 words a sudden and most extraordinary blush flamed over 
 her face. 
 
 Slight little blushes had touched this sensitive face 
 before during the present interview, as some bashful 
 feeling would come to the girl that she was pursuing a 
 very ridiculous subject of conversation with an intel 
 lectual man ; but those soft fluctuations of color were 
 not like this mysterious rushing red that so suddenly lit 
 her cheeks to fire. 
 
 The very color was scarce to be forgotten. Any eye 
 that saw for the first time Monny s translucent com 
 plexion kindle with one of her infrequent, intense blushes 
 would be struck by the mere hue : it was the rose of the 
 auroral lights, of sunset clouds. One involuntarily thought 
 of those skyey tints. No color of any flower that blooms 
 out of earthly soil seemed vivid enough to compare to that 
 bright, rushing blood. 
 
 It paled in a moment, but then came pulsing back again ; 
 and the embarrassed girl, rising up abruptly, retook her 
 switch from Mr. Leigh, and, saying " I must go do up my 
 hair again," fled confusedly out of the room. 
 
 What had startled her so? Maidenly shyness at sitting 
 theie any longer in her tumbled hair, a sudden access 
 of personal consciousness in the midst of that naive ab 
 straction with which she was arguing the case of "the 
 girls " ? Kenyon Leigh s musings on that bright, burning 
 
202 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 blush, that hasty flight, probably did not go back of some 
 such thought as this not now. But a severer analyst 
 than a lover would have recognized that Monny s em 
 barrassment was scarce to be accounted for by any cause 
 of the moment: it was an agitation too unlike herself. 
 For beneath all her sensitiveness, her swift-changing 
 moods, there was some quality of repose in the girl very 
 nnwont to be shaken into such a loss of self-possession as 
 had marked her last fluttering exit from the room. 
 
 The desolated man left alone in the study could only 
 realize, as he instinctively did, that this time Monny would 
 not return. She did not. He had to gather up his bait 
 of curiosities for another day. Nevertheless he felt that 
 much remained to him from this intercourse for one 
 thing, the rainy-day friz. Consider the condition of a 
 lover when he cherishes tenderly the charmer s false hair \ 
 when he hunts through all his possessions disconsolate 
 at finding nothing quite choice and delicate enough to 
 wrap the treasure in. 
 
 In the midst of this affecting spectacle of devotion 
 which the Rev. Kenyon Leigh now presents we must 
 pause to affirm that the present chapter is not intended 
 to stimulate the trade in false hair, Heaven forbid ! 
 Undoubtedly the Fijian style of hair-dressing conduced 
 neither to the general health of woman, nor to the natural 
 growth of her scalp ; nevertheless, in its worst rage, total 
 baldness at twenty-one was not a common condition, even 
 among fashionable young ladies, although this might we-1 
 be inferred from the Jeremiades of our day on woman s 
 folly, some echoes of which had, doubtless, blindly lodged 
 in the brain of the inexperienced minister. All the folly 
 he found, however, in Monny s account of the girlish 
 artifices of lior mates, probably struck him as folly which 
 had an extremely innocent side, a discovery which Te 
 
A IU:YL-:KEND IDOL. 203 
 
 think some women of the day who are so seveie on their 
 sex would do well to make. 
 
 It is a great pleasure to be pretty and to be eighteen : 
 and. when that short-lived pleasure is over, it would seem 
 thnt some memory of it should remain to the woman to 
 soften her judgment of the girls, even in their little vani 
 ties, their wish to be prettier every minute of their lives 
 than it is at all necessary to be. There is a very innocent 
 side to this folly ; and how briefly lasts, as a rule, all of it 
 that can really be called folly ! 
 
 That young defender of the girls, who was still one of 
 them, had evidently quite forgotten her hair now, in some 
 mysterious memories which her talk on that unique sub 
 ject with Mr. Leigh had strangely evoked. Dropping her 
 switch absently on the toilet-table of her chamber, whither 
 she had so swiftly gone from the minister s study, she 
 stood, with her unbound curls falling round her, lost to 
 every thing but those silent reminiscences which still, in 
 the solitude of her own room, sent the blushes to her 
 cheeks. Presently she moved towards the door connecting 
 her two apartments, and went into her studio, walking 
 slowly, and still with that brooding, abstracted gaze as of 
 one who recalls, detail by detail, something long forgotten. 
 By that table against the wall, piled with folios, she paused, 
 and took from among them that same collection of her 
 old school-studies which Mr. Leigh had looked over the 
 first time he had ever been in that room. What she 
 sought was the picture in oils which he had called 4 i the 
 handsome young cabalkro." It was soon found, and a 
 curiously troubled glance the girl now bestowed on it. 
 All that unruffled calm with which she had seen the picture 
 in Mr. Leigh s hand on the gone-by morning was broken 
 up. Yet tLiis trouble in her face seemed scarce of regret, 
 DO pain of loss ; only the same confused, bashful, blushing 
 
204 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 distress which had so overcome her when she hastened 
 out just now from Mr. Leigh s presence. 
 
 She laid down the picture, and began a search through 
 all the drawings dating back to her school-days : she was 
 examining if any other sketch of that same face was 
 among them. None was found ; and, laying the folios 
 back in their place, she took up again the picture of the 
 superbly handsome youth. Not stealthily, but very quiet 
 ly, her agitation had calmed in these moments, she 
 carried it towards the old-fashioned fireplace in the room. 
 On its hearth some new impulse seemed to arrest her for 
 a moment, drawing her across the room, the painted 
 board still in her hand, to an easel which stood by a 
 window in the most favorable lights for working. A new 
 canvas was on the easel, the colors still wet upon it. 
 The picture portrayed a single powerful figure in the 
 garb of a Knight-Templar : it was painted life-size, and 
 about half-length. A certain card-photograph, which the 
 artist ha(J possessed herself of unknown to its owner, was 
 pinned up on the easel : the knightly painting on the can 
 vas had the face of the photograph. The mediaeval armor 
 of the figure was evidently being copied from some old 
 engravings that were lying about. 
 
 With a shy, mysterious movement that seemed stirred 
 by the picture on the easel rather than by the one in her 
 hand, the girl slowly lifted the latter, holding it at arm s- 
 length, approaching it to the other picture, not too near, 
 but still with a survey that evidently compared the two 
 faces. And ever such a strange, triumphing tenderness 
 grew in those alternate glances as they sought the face on 
 the easel, as they lingered on it last and long. 
 
 Was it the artist that rejoiced so with that mysterious, 
 wondrous joy which seemed trembling at itself? Cer 
 tainly tfce progress marked by the two pieces of work was 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 205 
 
 immense. Modelled from the beginning was the unfin 
 ished face on the easel with some power of handling that 
 nothing else of all Monny s work approached. The like 
 ness was already a living one ; but, for that matter, so was 
 the likeness of the face she held in her hand, a face 
 she had painted before she was seventeen. Even in those 
 years Monny could seize a likeness. This latter likeness 
 she earned back now to the fireplace, and laid it between 
 the old-fashioned andirons. There was a box on the 
 hearth filled with the dried pine-needles which the little 
 Capo-Cod boys bring round in bags, and sell at the door 
 for Kindlings. 
 
 Monny was a vast patron of pine-needles, as well as of 
 various other staples of small-boy traders, for which she 
 had no very urgent use. The pine-needles had a use 
 now : heaping them high on the hearth, she applied a 
 lighted match to the pile, and in this aromatic blaze the 
 picture of the handsome youth went up. 
 
206 A REVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 rMHAT new picture on the easel absorbed Monny as no 
 -J- work had ever done before. Her studio became an 
 absolutely interdicted place to all mortals but herself. It 
 was, in fact, the recent passing of this decree, banishing 
 Mr. Leigh from her room, which had added stimulus to 
 his ingenious efforts to draw the maiden into his own 
 room, as exemplified in the last chapter. She grew so 
 miserly, however, of her time now, few and short were 
 the visits that he could secure from her there or elsewhere : 
 in fact, meal-times were about, the only times at present 
 that he had for seeing the young lady. 
 
 41 Can we not even know the subject of this extraordi 
 nary picture? " he asked one day, going with Monny up 
 the front stairs after dinner, and managing to delay her a 
 moment in the upper entry before she unlocked her studio- 
 door, to disappear for the rest of the afternoon. 
 
 " It is a battle-piece. I have not painted a battle- 
 piece before since the lunacies of my first works. There 
 were some marvellous battle-pieces among those. The 
 carnage was dreadful." 
 
 44 This time, the life-blood spilt will be that of the 
 artist," said the lover. "I have seen her growing pale 
 every day since this murderous work began." 
 
 "It is such a strain," replied Monny, with a deep sigh 
 of affected exhaustion, "to imagine heroes in this poor, 
 degenerate era ! So far, far back, I have to look for them 
 way back into the middle ages ! One must needs grow 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 207 
 
 pale with such an effort," said the girl, her secret heart 
 thrilling with a thought how opposite from the words her 
 mischievous lips spoke. 
 
 1 But you must be obliged to borrow, even out of this 
 miserable age, models for the corporeal outlines of those 
 heroes. I do not hear them coming up stairs to the 
 studio, neither the soldiers nor the steeds. How do 
 you study the grouping of your figures? " 
 
 " There is no group, not a steed. It is a battle-piece 
 of one." 
 
 ** Oh ! Is the warrior falling on his own sword? " 
 
 " Never ! never ! He is not the warrior to do that." 
 
 "Will he do the deed and repeut it? he had better never been 
 born. 
 
 Will lie do the deed, and exalt it? then his fame shall be out 
 worn: 
 
 He shall do the deed, and abide it, and sit on his throne on 
 high, 
 
 And look on to-day and to-morrow as those that never die. * 
 
 As the lover stood in admiring amaze at the sudden 
 burst of dramatic fire with which these lines were recited, 
 the girlish voice thrilling rich and resonant with such a 
 depth and compass of tones as one would scarce have 
 imagined it to possess, Monny turned in its lock the key 
 on which her hand rested, and in a second she had passed 
 through the door, having opened it narrowly as possible. 
 From within showed only the half of her tantalizing face 
 as she peeped back through the crack to say wickedly, 
 
 4 It is time now for that afternoon slumber of mine 
 The feeble-minded must have naps, naps five hours long, 
 by daylight." 
 
 Wherewith swiftly clashed the door, and clicked the 
 little bolt in its lock ; and the man was left speechless 
 without, wondering what other of his base misconceptions 
 
208 A KEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 of Monny in the past the witch had found out, and stoied 
 up in remembrance against him. 
 
 Bitterness was no longer in these remembrances. In 
 fact, from the very brokenness of the moments in which 
 any speech could now be seized with Monuy, the na vete 
 with which her admirer openly laid in wait for these scraps 
 of intercourse, the pretexts with which the engrossed 
 a: list put him off, from all this there grew an infor 
 mality of talk between the pair in which their acquaint 
 ance certainly went not backward, although the long talks 
 were suspended. All the sportive side of the girl s char 
 acter began to come out, unafraid, during these days, in a 
 thousand espiegleries, caprices, as native to her as the 
 foan~ i? to the wave ; and in this dancing temperament, as 
 in the serious young soul beneath it, Monny Rivers was 
 created to be a perpetual charm and benison to Kenyon 
 Leigh. 
 
 In many ways his life had been lived at an intense, too 
 intense, a strain. It is not the radical, hurling his axe 
 unquestioningly at the root of every tree of abuse, who 
 really wears himself out, but the man who has at once 
 the radical hatred of what is wrong in society, and the 
 conservative vision of all the long and slow gathered good 
 liable to be uptorn in exterminating the evil. Men of 
 this balance of mind, especially when they are men of 
 such poetic sensibility as was Kenyon Leigh, are probably 
 wont, as a rule, to spend their lives rather in eloquent 
 exposition of the world s disorders than in any active, 
 practical attempts to right them. Especially are they 
 unlikely to choose a pulpit as the standing-place from 
 which to right them, at least in the present age. This 
 minister, perhaps, never preached in his great cit} T church, 
 when, in the varied crowd that filled it, there were not 
 men who came there, drawn by very wonder to see this 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 209 
 
 man, so simple, calm, and strong, stand up, and with his 
 most luminous, instructed mind, rest all that he had to 
 say of life and death on those old hallucinations of a 
 crucified Jew. He was sincere, as we have said, in this 
 simple faith of his : nevertheless, to him, as to another, 
 existence was full of burning, unsolved questions. He 
 was a man who could not live without some theoretic larg<*- 
 ness of belief in life, could not be satisfied with dabbling, 
 however diligently, in any mere surface of the stream of 
 human evils ; and he saw too well how elusive were all the 
 r^al sources of that stream to have the self-complacency in 
 his toils which comforts more shallow men. His mental 
 traits would never be altered, and it was not in his char 
 acter to slacken any of his manifold labors. Such spirits 
 cannot ease themselves by throwing down any of those 
 burdens of humanity which they are framed to bear with 
 so vicarious a pain : a great counterpoise of happiness is 
 the only balance which will save even the strongest of 
 them from some morbidness at last. 
 
 This most unimagined deliverance had come of late to 
 Kenyon Leigh : he had not laid down any thing of the old, 
 but lie had taken up something strangely new. Yes : while 
 it would be a very inadequate stating of the case to say 
 that he had had a long lit of the blues, which, falling in 
 love, he had forgotten, it was still true, that, in this great 
 experience of the man, the minister had got his new start. 
 Certainly sermons did not progress much just now ; but 
 the influence which was at present a <listraction from all 
 work prophesied of a future when it would be a stimulus 
 to work wonderful and new with all the wonder and new 
 ness with which life was opening to Kenyon L <j igh in 
 these days, which had now begun to thrill with a hope 
 that Monny might be his. 
 
 So, since the minister had got at last his vacation just 
 
210 A EEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 as he bad given it up, a respite from all the jarring grind 
 of life in a burst of the music of the spheres, we trust 
 the severest censor of ministerial vacations will forgive 
 him for wanting a little more of it. For about this time 
 he went to New York to arrange for just a small piece 
 more of holiday. He was really only proposing to extend 
 his vacation to its original limit, an early date in October, 
 which had been fixed for his return when he went on his 
 late foreign tour. But, when he had landed at New York 
 in the summer, he had informed his church-wardens, or 
 whomever he had to inform, that he should take his pulpit 
 again a month earlier than he had been expected to, 
 intending then to spend only a few weeks at Cape Cod. 
 But, since Cape Cod had become the centre of the world 
 to him, he now wished to claim again his original grant of 
 vacation. And since this was the first time in his mortal 
 career that he had ever taken one day s vacation on a 
 lady s account, and as choosing a wife is usually allowed 
 to be an affair of moment, especially to a clergyman, 
 we repeat our entreaty that the hero be not denounced 
 as a hireling shepherd for being just this once a laggard 
 at his post. It was really almost impossible for him to 
 ask Monny formally to marry him just yet, for want of 
 a chance to see her long enough in the privacy which 
 such questions demand, because of that terrible battle- 
 piece of one which kept her so invisible. But, as she 
 had begun to throw out hints that it was growing towards 
 completion, there were hopes of days beyond more propi 
 tious for declarations, if the suitor could be on the spot. 
 He could not think of leaving the spot. So he went to 
 New York to arrange about the supplies for his pulpit. 
 When this business was despatched, he would not leave 
 the city, of course, without attending to one of those little 
 lites with wlrch courtships, by civilized man and by sav- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 211 
 
 age, have, in all ages of the world, been carried on. He 
 wished to make Monny a present. What should it be ? 
 
 The solicitude with which the present suitor pondered 
 this question language cannot describe. Was it treasures 
 in the way of literature or art that he thought of for this 
 oblatioii? Not at all. Something of fresh or rare in these 
 lines he would take back to Monny from the metropolis as 
 a matter of course. But if he had had the markets of th* 
 world to choose from in books, or objects of art, or vertu, 
 not in these would have been the gift to the maiden that 
 his soul was set on. TJie gift must be something to 
 wear. Monny could not help knowing how he admired 
 her genius and her sense, but did she know how he doted 
 on her clothes ? She read largely the same books that he 
 read : nothing would be easier now (however it was a few 
 weeks ago) than to select books for Monny. But to give 
 her something most exquisitely difficult to select, most 
 absolutely feminine, to suit her taste where it was so 
 subtly delicate a matter to suit it, that only a lover of the 
 last devotion, the most appreciative worship of every 
 refinement of her being, could possibly succeed in the 
 feat, this was the man s dear ambition. 
 
 Jewelry he set aside at once. In the first place, he did 
 recall so much of the conventional etiquette in these 
 things as to have a notion that very costly presents from 
 a gentleman to a lady who was not formally betrothed to 
 him would be a little premature, have some air of antici- 
 pator} r reliance on her favor, an audacity of presump 
 tion that he would shudder to be guilty of. Then jewels 
 he would have to depend on a shopman to tell him the 
 intrinsic worth of ; they could not be his own sole selec 
 tion : there would be an utter spoiling of his idea. No, 
 the something to wear must not only be something of his 
 very personal choice, but it must be most personally fitted 
 
212 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 to Monny ; not a necklace or a brooch that any woman 
 could wear. 
 
 Well, at last, as the very acme of all that was most 
 baffling in the feminine toilet, he bethought himself of 
 those objects which women wear on their heads, called 
 hats and bonnets ; those things which now they tilted 
 over their noses, and anon perched precarious afar on the 
 farthest reaches of their back hair ; which this season were 
 all buttoned up askew over one ear, and presto ! the next 
 season, all peeled up on the other the lovely method 
 that he began to discern in this madness ! A hat, a new 
 hat, was what he would buy for Monuy. He trembled at 
 his own daring ; but still, when, after their long circling 
 round, his thoughts had once alighted on that form of 
 present, they clung to it as to no other. 
 
 Behold our hero, then, in a milliner s shop. By what 
 process of inquiry he arrived at that precise depot of 
 
 elegance, the millinery parlors of Madame , most 
 
 recherche of all New -York milliners, he got there. Also 
 he got in, although the establishment was as good as 
 closed at present ; all its hands being secluded in some 
 invisible work-rooms, preparing for the fall openings, 
 which would not occur until Madame s polite class of 
 
 patrons should be returned to the city. Madame 
 
 herself would doubtless have recognized at once the very 
 widely known person of the rector of St. Ancient s, where 
 so many of her bonnets went to church ; but that milliner 
 was much too elegant a being to be yet permanently 
 
 returned to town herself. However, Mrs. , her chief 
 
 deputy milliner, who reigned in her absence, although she 
 did not know who the stranger was, having come to New 
 York herself only within the year, could not resist this 
 imposing figure of a gentleman so devotedly bent on 
 buying a bonnet f or a lady out of town. So the Re* 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 213 
 
 Kenyon Leigh was honored with a distinction to which no 
 
 patron of Madame had ever before attained, a 
 
 grand opening was made solely for himself. 
 
 liehold him, then, in the centre of the chief millinery 
 parlor, a long salon curiously mixed of shop and draw 
 ing- room, but now in so dismantled a state that not much 
 was to be seen in it beyond a forest of empty little stands 
 of wire. This forest, however, was soon made to blossom 
 utterly beyond the rose, as the milliner took from great 
 cavernous drawers which were let into walls and tables in 
 
 all directions, the choicest of Madame s new trimmed 
 
 hats and bonnets, hiding their richness there until the fall 
 openings. 
 
 These head-pieces were so infinitely more incomprehen 
 sible as they nodded at him from the bodiless wire stands 
 than they had ever been coming into church as the apex 
 of a fine lady, the minister began to realize all the magni 
 tude of his undertaking : the sweat stood on his brow. 
 
 "Was it to be a hat for driving, opera, church?" 
 asked the milliner. 
 
 He should like a hat that could be worn to church. 
 u But still a handsome hat," quickly added this back 
 slidden Tertullian, forgetful of the rigid plainness with 
 which women should be attired at church. 
 
 44 Was the hat wanted for immediate wear?" asked 
 Mrs. . 
 
 "He should like it to be worn right away," the cus 
 tomer said, thinking of next Sunday, and the little Ortho 
 dox meeting-house of Lonewater. 
 
 The milliner made a rapid shifting of the wire stands, 
 massing directly in front of the gentleman all the head- 
 coverings most suited to this precise turning-time of the 
 seasons, opening new drawers, and adding more hats to 
 the collection. 
 
 
214 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 The gaze with which the man surveyed this collection 
 was curiously unlike the masculine blankntss of gaze to 
 be expected. It was a look, which, while touchingly 
 helpless, was withal so critical, such an unhappy shadow 
 in the eyes that went wandering over the ekefs-d ceuvres of 
 
 Madame as of a being haunted by an ideal dream 
 
 of beauty in the shape of a hat utterly unfound there, 
 this was really a variety of the nil admirari air to stir 
 both the pride of the milliner and the sympathy of the 
 woman. She stood silently conjecturing what was the 
 probable personal style of the destined wearer of that 
 hat. Her first notion, of some stately queen of society, 
 who could carry off a great deal of bonnet, began to be 
 displaced by the wiser second tliought, that if the case 
 was of a veritable grande passion, as clearly it was, then, 
 of course, it was a case of the attraction of opposites. 
 The lady whom this tallest of men had fallen in love with 
 would not be tall : no, if she was not absolutely petite, it 
 would be a mercy. 
 
 Well, that mercy had been vouchsafed. Monny was 
 not petite, still she would not have been called a tall 
 young woman : so the milliner was really approximating 
 to some correct notion of the figure of the unknown. 
 Whether along with this new notion came an idea of girl- 
 ishness, she ventured to inquire, 
 
 " Is the lady very young and ? " 
 
 44 Very young and beautiful," replied the admirer, with 
 the promptest decision. 
 
 44 Ah ! Then she can wear the most trying things. The 
 simplest hats are really much the most trying," said the 
 milliner, who understood her business. 44 Nothing so sets 
 off the face that can bear it as a hat of a certain striking 
 and elegant simplicity. But only an absolutely fresh face 
 can venture on those things," declared Mrs. , turning 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 215 
 
 to some drawers where were stored against the coming 
 winter opera hats for the young beauties in their first 
 season. 
 
 "Elegant simplicity; that is precisely the lady s style 
 of dress," said the customer, eagerly catching at the word, 
 and beginning to follow the milliner all round the room, 
 opening the drawers for her. 
 
 If any one fancies that the transaction in which the 
 Rev. Kenyon Leigh was now engaged was one in which 
 that vein of shyness which still somewhat inhered in him 
 would at all appear, nothing could be a greater miscon 
 ception. To see nothing at all but his object, when that 
 object was a great one, was a marked characteristic of 
 this man ; and the wholly unembarrassed and absorbingly 
 earnest quest with which his own eyes searched the 
 drawers (he could look into them right over the milli 
 ner s head), and the perfectly pellucid candor with which 
 he gave any information about his lady-love that could 
 facilitate the finding of her affinity of a bonnet, these 
 things made the milliner more and more ready to ravage 
 the shop for him. 
 
 " Blue, I think you mentioned as a favorite color with 
 the lady, and that her complexion was fair? " interrogated 
 Mrs. . 
 
 44 Most exceedingly fair," declared the admirer. 
 
 They were looking into a drawer now whose hats cer 
 tainly only the exceedingly fair could afford to put on. 
 Hats like a snowdrift of white velvet, with white plumes, 
 and some little knot or wreath of blue ; then pale-blue 
 velvets, white-plumed and white-wreathed among these 
 lovely head-pieces was one charming chapeau, somewhat 
 plainer than the rest, which the milliner dr^w forth. It 
 was a white-chip hat of the finest quality, its only trim 
 ming a very rich ostrich-plume of the loveliest light blue, 
 
216 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 sweeping back over the half-high crown, and a wreath of 
 convolvulus, dyed in the solid color to match the plume, 
 running along the brim of the hat, which was rolled 
 smoothly up, and faced with black velvet, in a style 
 destined to become very popular, but which just then wag 
 entirely novel on this side the water. The anxious eyes 
 which were looking over the milliner s shoulder saw at 
 once in this hat something which really looked like Mon- 
 ny. Here were no flaps and streamers of silk and lace 
 dragging on one side, and variegated bouquets bunching 
 on the other, with birds roosting around promiscuously, 
 as in the compositions which the milliner had shown him 
 in her first idea of the lady who could carry off so much 
 
 bonnet. Mrs. perceiving, with but a glance at her 
 
 customer, that she had found the right thing at last, 
 began to explain to the neophyte, that, this hat being of 
 chip, it was entirely suitable to be worn to church ; that 
 the delicate blue of the plume and wreath was the most 
 choice of all created shades of blue ; and that the darken 
 ing touch imparted by the black velvet brim was just the 
 touch appropriate to September. 
 
 This having in the hat the very touch belonging to 
 September struck the awed man as so fine a felicity, it 
 offset the little anxiety he had felt lest the black-velvet 
 brim added too many colors to the hat ; for one funda 
 mental principle that he had grasped in the bewitching 
 mystery of Monny s toilets was that she wore the very 
 fewest colors at a time. But the milliner, on a hint of 
 this trouble, gently assuring him that a lady of elegant 
 tasto would be certain to wear always a black suit with 
 this particular hat, so the black- velvet brim, instead of 
 introducing a new color, would be only another point of 
 harmony in her toilet, with this suggestion his eased 
 mind was enabled fully to accept the black- velvet brim. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 217 
 
 So there remained only a single point of doubt, an 
 ornament where the plume was fastened on, that flashed 
 with some metallic sharpness of glitter not quite sugges 
 tive of Monny s style to her admirer. 
 
 44 You do not like the aigrette?" said Mrs. , as 
 
 he indicated this too-lustrous object. u It can be changed 
 f 3r another in a moment. Still this is a very elegant one. 
 I sun not sure that we have another quite so choice." 
 
 The gentleman s reply revealed that his thought was, 
 whether the hat could exist without any spangle or bangle 
 at all. 
 
 " Something would have to replace the aigrette, if it 
 were taken off," mildly pronounced the milliner. A plain 
 velvet bow, either of black or blue, would answer," she 
 said, and disappeared for a moment. Returning pres 
 ently, she brought with her bias strips of blue velvet and 
 of black, and, deftly twisting a knot of each, she laid 
 them on the hat, each in turn, that the gentleman might 
 choose which he preferred. 
 
 41 Put your soul to it." He recalled Monny s old dic 
 tum in matters of the toilet, and was ready to put his 
 soul, every immortal spark of it, to deciding whether that 
 bow should be of black or blue. As he stood thus con 
 centrating all the brains of the Leighs and there was a 
 great deal of brains in the family on those two rags of 
 velvet, I trust it will be acknowledged, in excuse of the 
 feminine world who had so adored this man, that he had 
 some adorable qualities. After a silent travail of tniod 
 over the blue bow, which ended with the fear that it \tould 
 introduce an alien element, as he could not find any blue 
 velvet anywhere else about the hat, he begged the mil 
 liner, Would she please hold the black bow on once more? 
 And the milliner held it on. But the black bow seemed 
 too black to him ; until, lo ! he actually originated an 
 
218 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 idea. "Could" that kind," he asked, pointing to the 
 wreath, "be stretched out, or could some more of it be 
 pieced on, so as to wind over the bow, and thus soften 
 the blackness a little? " 
 
 Certainly," replied Mrs. , astonished at the 
 
 millinery genius of the man. The spray was a very rare 
 one : but they had just one duplicate of it, on another hat 
 of a different style ; she would take it off at once, and cut 
 it for this hat. So she stripped the other hat, and twined 
 some more convolvulus over the black-velvet bow as if it 
 grew there ; and, behold, the thing was achieved at last, 
 a hat which was just that marvel of quiet beauty and 
 elegance which Monny s hat should be. 
 
 Elated with his success, the man even dared a second 
 purchase. There were some simple little garden-hats, 
 very fashionable this summer, made all of white lawn, 
 shaped by slender little reeds on which the lawn was 
 puffed. Seeing a half-dozen of these hats stacked on a 
 table, he remembered that Monny had worn such a one 
 during his first weeks at the Cape, and that one morning, 
 when he had seen her go out with this snowy head-cover 
 ing, which he thought marvellously becoming to her, she 
 came home bareheaded, the light thing having blown off 
 her head into the sea. He had missed it ever since, and 
 now he had a chance to replace it. Taking up one of the 
 hats from the table, he perceived, with his present critical 
 eye in millinery, that the lawn w?s not of the finest, and 
 he asked the milliner if she had other such hats, in a 
 better quality of cloth. She replied that the ready-made 
 lawn hats did not come in any finer material, but that 
 she could have one made to his order in an hour or two, in 
 the finest of lawn. And he gave the order immediately. 
 
 " They sometimes trimmed those garden-hats very taste 
 fully," said Mrs. , "with flutings and bows of the 
 
A RKVKRKND IDOL. 219 
 
 lawn, edged with imitation Valenciennes lace. Should 
 the hat be made in tluit way?" 
 
 "Certainly, if that was prettier. But he should not 
 wish any thing of imitation about it." And the milliner 
 wrote down " real Valenciennes " on the order. 
 
 " Would he have a little colored ribbon fluted round 
 under the brim, with strings of the same? It was an 
 addition ; and the lady could easily take it off if she did 
 not like it. Should the color of the ribbon be blue also 
 for this hat?" 
 
 The gentleman said that there was a very remarkable 
 kind of purple sometimes worn by the lady. 
 
 u Mauve?" suggested the milliner. The man looked 
 helpless at that word, but said he should know the partic 
 ular purple if he could see it. So he was shown boxes of 
 ribbons in all imaginable shades of violet and lilac ; and, 
 picking out his particular purple with the slow but sure 
 sagacity that he had all along displayed, the milliner 
 approved it as a very choice shade of mauve, and the 
 second hat was settled. If we were to mention the figure 
 paid for his two purchases, it would be seen that this was 
 one of those lover s attentions which it were really well 
 should cease after marriage, as Monny certainly could buy 
 her own bonnets with far less expenditure of money as 
 well as of vital force. But the milliner, discerning, of 
 course, that the more money the lover could pay for his 
 lx>nnets, the happier he would be, had the benevolence to 
 fix prices accordingly ; and, paying her unconscionable 
 bill, the purchaser joyfully departed, carrying with him 
 the blue-plumed chip in a bandbox, and ordering the other 
 hat to be sent to his hotel. 
 
 After this performance in ladies shopping, it was, of 
 course, the easiest of tasks for the hero now to buy a 
 dress-pattern of the best black silk for good Mistress 
 
220 A KEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 Doane, a gay striped shawl of the newest fall styles for 
 Susannah, and, that he might carry every inmate of that 
 beloved old Cape-Cod house something to wear, he wound 
 up with a new collar for Duke George. 
 
 The morning having been consumed by these pursuits, 
 he next went to lunch at his old club-house, having 
 oidcred all parcels sent to his hotel, save the bandbox 
 c< ntaiuing the hat arrived at with so much toil and pains : 
 that previous possession never left his hand. It chanced 
 that almost the first man whom he met at his club was that 
 eminent light of the New- York medical profession, Dr. 
 Herophilus. The two not having seen each other before 
 for a year, they sat down to table together ; and, as the 
 serious reader will be glad to know, Mr. Leigh forthwith 
 toned up his mind, after the enervating occupations of the 
 morning, by plunging into a vigorous discussion of Euro 
 pean politics, and such other weighty matters of men s 
 discourse. 
 
 Now, Dr. Herophilus was a creature of learning and 
 skill, a highly knowing member, in fact, of the know 
 ing sex. Why, then, should the thoughts of so masculine 
 a being stray ever and anon, as they did, from those large 
 themes which he was discussing with his companion, into 
 certain curious little surmises about him of the merest 
 personal sort? The truth was, that Mr. Leigh, in various 
 ways, touched him with a little sense of surprise. For 
 instance, he had supposed that his early return from 
 abroad had been moved by a characteristic eagerness to 
 be at his work again. But here he was, in superb health, 
 as the professional eye could see, yet coming up to town 
 to put supplies in his pulpit that he might stay summering 
 at Cape Cod through all the September breezes, which, 
 one would say, would so in sweep somewhat chill over 
 those lonely sands. Then, Dr. Herophiius did observe 
 
A REV Eli END IDOL. 221 
 
 the bandbox. As a fartaly-man he knew it infallibly for 
 what it was, a lady s bor.net-box. 
 
 To be sure, the Rev. Kenyon Leigh had been seen 
 before in his life laden with rather odd parcels. Not that 
 he was what is properly called an eccentric man : he had 
 been reared as a gentleman, and ordinarily he made no 
 startling deviations from what are conventionally styled 
 the habits of gentlemen. But, while he did not paradu 
 himself in the vocation of express or market man, he was 
 capable of carrying a provision-basket as unconsciously 
 as another man carries a cane, if in his walks he chanced 
 on a place where a full provision-basket was directly 
 needed, and no one else directly at hand to fetch it. So, 
 at one time and another, the rector of St. Ancient s had 
 been seen with such matters in his hand, that perhaps 
 there was no variety of luggage which it would have been 
 entirely astonishing to see him carrying about town, except 
 that precise variety which he had with him to-day. Of 
 course Dr. Ilerophilus, having also the habits of a gentle 
 man, asked no open questions, since his companion volun 
 teered no explanation of this most suggestively feminine 
 appurtenance which the latter handled so delicately, be 
 stowing it, as he sat down to table, first in one spot, and 
 then in another, before he could be satisfied that it was 
 absolutely well placed. Still the bandbox wrought on his 
 secret mind. 
 
 The fact was, that there was already lodged in the 
 physician s mind a little circumstance with which these 
 wandering impressions of something unusual and very 
 newly domestic about the Rev. Kenyon Leigh made a 
 kind of conjunction. Mrs. Van Cortlaudt had lauded in 
 New York from a European steamer a few days before. 
 Her first stopping-place had been her town residence ; but 
 it was early yet formally to open that, and she had signi- 
 
222 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 5ed to Dr. Herophilus, whom she had called in profes 
 sionally, her wish to find a very quiet seaside place, utterly 
 removed from society, in which to restore herself for a 
 few weeks. She had, in fact, mentioned Cape Cod as the 
 place she had thought of for this recuperative retreat. 
 
 There was nothing the matter with the lady s constitu 
 tion beyond a little temporary fatigue consequent on her 
 Atlantic voyage ;. and her attempt to get sent by a physi 
 cian s prescription to that precise spot where the Rev. 
 Kenyon Leigh was sojourning had quietly tickled the 
 medical mind. For it is perhaps needless to state that 
 every one who personally knew Mrs. Van Cortlandt knew 
 her long designs on the rector of St. Ancient s, save that 
 gentleman himself. And as there was a Mrs. Herophilus, 
 this Benedict was naturally well posted in all the fine 
 points of the widow s strategy. That strategy, it seemed, 
 was growing bolder. For Mrs. Van Cortlandt to be fol 
 lowing the minister quite so openly as to take board 
 beside him in the extremely isolated region where he had 
 now hidden himself, this was a remarkably new advance 
 on the widow s old feline policy. And still more remark 
 ably new in the Rev. Kenyon Leigh was the policy of 
 putting supplies in his pulpit when he could be there him 
 self. What did it all mean? queried the doctor.. Had 
 the huntress really brought down the game at last in some 
 of the opportunities of her late European tour? Was 
 there to be a little quiet fixing-up of things down there in 
 the Cape-Cod desert, afar from town gossip, and would 
 the minister retake his pulpit in October a married man ? 
 All these speculations to come out of a bandbox in which 
 was hiding another woman s bonnet. 
 
 Still the speculations did not hang very well together, 
 even in the originator s mind. In the first place, hia 
 professional interview with the widow had not exactly 
 
A EEVEEEOT) IDOL. 223 
 
 given him the impression that there was as yet an actual 
 understanding between the pursuer and the pursued. 
 What did it all mean? 
 
 There are certain men, and the invulnerable rector of 
 St. Ancient s was eminently one of them, concerning 
 whom even their own sex ask, with some curiosity, whether 
 they will ever really marry, and who the woman will be. 
 Will they be conquered at last by a supreme charm, or 
 entrapped by a supreme artifice? 
 
 Perhaps Dr. Herophilus, merely in the interests of pure 
 philosophy, wished to see whether Mrs. Van Cortlandt and 
 the Rev. Kenyon Leigh furnished one more proof of that 
 saying of Mr. Thackeray, quoted in the early part of this 
 history, as to the sure reward of female determination in 
 such pursuit of a man. Or it may be that he was moved 
 by a simple marital desire to carry Mrs. Herophilus, still 
 summering out of town, a striking bit of news at this 
 particularly dull season. But whatever his motive, cer 
 tainly with as smug a countenance as was ever worn by 
 any feminine gossip throwing out an apparently careless 
 remark as a bait to catch personal information, this man 
 of science said, somewhere in the midst of views on 
 Bismarck and the Ultramoutanes, 
 
 " By the way, this hamlet at Cape Cod that you find so 
 charming is there a habitation there where a lady could 
 board ? Mrs. Van Cortlandt has just arrived home, as 
 you may know, and was speaking to me yesterday of her 
 wish to find just such a place as yours seems to be." 
 
 With these tentative words, the doctor, who was making 
 a very hearty luncheon, having breakfasted unusually 
 tariy, and expecting to dine extremely late, helped 
 himself to another slice of the fowl he had ordered. It 
 was a superior kind of bird, served with some French 
 sauce which he ladled out just now in a very absorbed 
 
224 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 way, whether because he was ashamed of himself, or 
 because, while looking very intently at a dish, one is well 
 placed to flash an apparently careless glance into a face 
 opposite 
 
 He n-lght have looked at the face opposite half an 
 hour, it would still have remained a complete enigma to 
 him. Nothing is so absolutely fathomless sometimes to a 
 sophisticated world as pure simplicity. The only effect 
 on Kenyon Leigh of the woman s name which had been 
 thus fired at him was to make him wish most cordially to 
 do her a service. He wished it more cordially than if she 
 had been any other member of his parish. Not quite as 
 he would have heard any other name had he heard the 
 name of Mrs. Van Cortlandt ; not that he thought of 
 the woman, so suddenly recalled out of the total oblivion 
 into which she had fallen to him, with any shadow of 
 compunction. Clear as noonday was his sense that he 
 had never paid her any significant attentions ; no less 
 clear was his unconsciousness that she had ever paid him 
 any. But in his great experience of a real passion, and 
 in that deepened reverence for all women which had come 
 with his adoration for one woman, he had some sense as 
 if he had done Mrs. Van Cortlandt an irreverence in his 
 thought by having ever entertained even a fugitive idea 
 of her as a possible wife when he did not love her. His 
 feeling was but an undefined one ; for it was like an incon 
 ceivable chimera to him now that he had ever had any 
 marrying thoughts of the widow at all. Still some 
 memory of such thoughts, vaguely stirring in his con 
 sciousness, were probably at the bottom of his especial 
 eagerness to serve her now, the eagerness as of one who 
 has some little reparation to make. 
 
 Then another feeling, still more unformulated, may 
 have entered into the abounding welcome with which he 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 226 
 
 was ready to invite marriageable ladies into boarding- 
 places of the most suggestive neighborhood to himself : 
 he had drawn his last breath as a bachelor, so far as there 
 being any woman in the universe, save one, who could 
 ever more be the object to him of sentimental attentions. 
 So married he felt himself already to be, for time and foi 
 eternity, he could plant the handsomest of widows ard 
 maidens round him right and left, in that large libeity 
 towards all womankind wherewith his bond to one woman 
 had set him free forever. Sweet is emancipation to a 
 naturally liberty-loving soul ; and joyful to a naturally 
 benevolent spirit the finding itself suddenly enabled to 
 extend to a whole sex just benevolence, and no more, in a 
 world where it has been a little difficult to show them just 
 that attribute, and no more. 
 
 Thus altogether the minister responded with the most 
 exuberant heartiness to the remarks which the artful 
 Herophilus had thrown out as a trap. 
 
 " Certainly. There is one house in the town " (he wa 
 thinking of Capt. Gawthrop s) "where I am almost sure 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt could have board. She will under 
 stand, of course, what accommodations are to be expected 
 in these remote places ; but nothing could be more obli 
 ging than the people. And I am certain she could be 
 made quite comfortable there," he said, aware that Mrs. 
 Van Cortlandt could pay for whatever "comforts she 
 wished added to the Gawthrop arrangements. "Tell her 
 from me that I can thoroughly recommend the little (own 
 us a perfect retreat ; and I believe, also, the house will be 
 satisfactory enough. Stay, I will write her a note my 
 self, and tell her where to telegraph if she wishes to go 
 at once." And, calling a waiter to bring pen and paper, 
 the Rev. Kenyon Leigh was presently writing his note to 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt. 
 
226 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 The man of science sat as nonplussed as ever a man 
 of science was who had indulged a moment s fancy to 
 play the gossiping fool. Some such names as this he 
 began liberally to bestow on himself in his mind ; for, 
 with "all his nonplussed state, he saw the writing of that 
 note go on with a kind of remorse. The fact was, the 
 physician happened to know the beautiful widow too well 
 to think her at all the wife for Kenyon Leigh. And was 
 it possible that that gigantic piece of innocence, as he sat 
 there writing to her, did not know that he was writing to 
 a woman who wished to marry him ? Was he extending 
 to her a merely humane invitation to take a neighboring 
 lodge in his wilderness? and was he, Dr. Herophilus, the 
 means of it, the means which was to bring this blind 
 victim into such deadly near range of the sharp-shootress ? 
 It is verily to be suspected that the doctor was somewhat 
 a believer in Mr. Thackeray s philosophy ; for he saw the 
 most fatal liabilities in the isolation of the minister and 
 the determined widow, through the weeks to come, on 
 these Cape-Cod sands. 
 
 So he sat discomforted, as meddlers should, while the 
 minister wrote his note, directed it, and, calling the waiter 
 again, sent it by a private messenger to the lady s house, 
 that she might receive it at once. 
 
 The Ultramontanes did not come up again after this 
 little interruption ; for the minister informed his friend 
 that he had to take a run to Philadelphia before returning 
 to the Cape, and had still some more business in the city : 
 in short, he presently shook hands and departed, taking 
 with him that Pandora bandbox out of which had verily 
 flown certain winged mischiefs, wheeling their dark flight, 
 to bring the widow, the maiden, the minister, to most 
 fateful meetfngs. 
 
A BEVEKKND IDOL. 227 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LT was Saturday evening when Mr. Leigh came again 
 to the Cape. Mrs. Van Cortlandt he had nowhere 
 seen ; but that lady, on receiving his note in New York, 
 had lost no time. Engaging her boarding-place by tele 
 graph, and making her journey thither by steam, the 
 minister, moreover, using up a day by his trip to Phila 
 delphia, she arrived at Capt. Gawthrop s house just one 
 train in advance of the train which brought Mr. Leigh 
 again to Mrs. Doane s. At the latter house that evening, 
 there was, after tea, a little scene in the front sitting- 
 room. The returned traveller had deposited on a table 
 there sundry packages of the sort which make returned 
 travellers in general so interesting; viz., the presents 
 which he had brought for the household. 
 
 So, while Mrs. Doane unrolled and beheld her dress- 
 pattern with that profound thrill of satisfaction which 
 black silk of the best quality conveys to the heart of 
 woman, and while Susannah performed a true Ethiopian 
 dance of delight over the brave glory of her new shawl v 
 and ran to find u his Honor," who had become invisible 
 at this moment, Monny dipped into her two bandboxes, 
 and drew forth with blushing amaze their contents. 
 
 She .tried on both the hats by the ancient gilt-framed 
 looking-glass. She took them off, and looked their dainti 
 ness all over by the kerosene globe-lamp. To the last 
 shadow of a shade each of them suited her taste and her 
 style. She had the blue-plumed hat on her head, and the 
 
228 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 i 
 
 half-transparent white one poised like a snow-wreath on 
 her hand, when Mr. Leigh carne into the room. 
 
 " Real Valenciennes on a garden-hat ! Oh, what awful 
 extravagance ! cried Monny, as the first manner of 
 salute which she could trust her voice to make to that 
 gentleman. For, knowing very well that a lawn hat with 
 such trimmings had never been made but to a special 
 order, she was thinking of all it implied for Mr. Leigh tn 
 have discovered any language in which to communicate 
 detailed directions to a milliner. 
 
 For himself the novice in buying ladies bonnets 
 stood looking at the adored one s head to see how the 
 chip hat became her. " Her hair is pretty, but she isn t 
 pretty in her hair," was a remembered speech of Miss 
 Monny, which had terribly haunted him in the milliner s 
 shop, warning him that not only the hat must be pretty, 
 but Monny must be pretty in the hat. Well, surely noth 
 ing could be prettier than Monny in the chip hat, except 
 Monny in the lawn one, and vice versa. She tried them 
 on now by turns ; she whirled slowly round to be looked 
 at ; then she stood still, with the garden-hat on her head 
 and the dress-hat in her hand, to admire again the points 
 of the latter. 
 
 "It was made a little different at first," said the 
 anxious man, drawing near, and looking down also on 
 the hat, which Monny was turning about under the lamp 
 light. "There was a glittering substance there," point 
 ing as he spoke, "which I thought might not quite suit 
 you ; and so I had it cut off. But I have brought it, in 
 case you wished to fix it on again ; and he solemnly 
 drew from his vest-pocket the aigrette wra^ ped up in 
 tissue-paper. Then he proceeded, in words very crude 
 indeed, but wlrch were strangely significant to Monny, 
 to explain about that experimenting with the blue-velvet 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 229 
 
 bow and the black one. Did she suppose she would have 
 liked the blue one better? he asked, in such a tone as if 
 he might be going up to weep on his pillow because he 
 did not get the blue bow after all. 
 
 Mouny looked slowly up at these quaint explainiugs 
 (Mrs. Doane, having offered her thanks, had vanished 
 discreetly out of the room), ard the maiden s eyes met 
 htr lover s with a long, silent gaze. 
 
 Considering all that had been in the early acquaintance 
 of these two, pretty things to wear would have been a 
 very dangerous line of presents for the man to make to 
 this keen-eyed girl, if there had been one grain of false 
 quality in the impulse which had moved him to just these 
 gifts. But she saw to the bottom of his thought, and 
 knew that not as one pets a beloved doll, humoring its 
 doll-like fancies, had her lover brought her tokens like 
 these. A longing to make the amende honorable to Monny 
 for all his early mistaken judgment of her, to tell her 
 how charming to him was the very lightest foliage of lier 
 character, as well as its enduring roots of worth, in this 
 lover s longing, 
 
 " Once, and only once, and for one only," could Kenyon 
 Leigh master the high science of ribbons and flowers and 
 feathers ; and for once in the world a New -York milliner s 
 bonnet became poetic as over it the understanding eyes of 
 these two met in a look wherein all was spoken. 
 
 Words were not spoken here, however ; for just now 
 Ouke George must push the unlatched door with his nose, 
 and walk in, Susannah in his wake, ostensibly to take out 
 the dog. ~.mt really because she could no longer restrain her 
 curiosity to see what " his Honor " had brought for Miss 
 Monny. So the bonnets were displayed to this fresh 
 audience ; and then Monny bent down, and clasped his new 
 collar round Duke George s neck, and Mrs. Doane was 
 
230 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 called in to see bonnets and dog-collars, and altogether it 
 became a family scene again. 
 
 So we will glance at that other house, half a mile away, 
 where, also, was a newly-arrived traveller. Mrs. Van Cort- 
 landt was standing at a window of that house, looking 
 out, while her maid unpacked her trunks, into the mist} T 
 night which wrapped all the strange, low-lying Cape 
 shores. She was triumphing in the thought that this was 
 her last journey after Kenyon Leigh. She did not pre 
 tend, even to herself, that he had ever yet paid her any 
 lover s attentions. But the briefest term of courtship, 
 whose first step would be absolute assurance for the 
 last, was just what she had expected of the man ; and a 
 most prodigious first step for him, she counted it, that he 
 had invited her here. Moreover, she knew that all the 
 latter days in which she had seen Kenyon Leigh, at home 
 and in Europe, had been peculiarly favorable days for 
 her. This was true. Who shall say how all that mys 
 teriously fatal pressure which the years exert to reduce 
 every ideal aim to the commonplace standard had wrought 
 on Kenyon Leigh to bring him to a mere mariage de raison 
 at last? It is time to adjust one s self to life as it is, to 
 follow no longer the young dream of what it is, had been 
 an underlying thought with him about all things during 
 this thirty-fourth of his, the storm-tossed year, and 
 there was the old appointed anchor of marriage and a 
 home. It had been, indeed, the hour for the woman who 
 had always pleased his taste, and skilfully had she im 
 proved it. She had gone abroad when he did, by no 
 means, however, on the same steamer : when he returned 
 home, she also set sail, but, very decorously, by a later 
 ship. Her art had always been perfect. 
 
 The whole secret of power over others, she believed, 
 lay in dexterity of scheming : by this she had woo th* 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 231 
 
 invulnerable Kenyon Leigh, and by this she meant to be 
 that power with him after marriage which she had not 
 been with her first husband. For, although men were by 
 nature absorbed only in themselves, she believed women 
 of sufficient art and subtlety could overcome ttat nature. 
 History made abundant record of such womeu. Ninon 
 de 1 Enclos, with her lovers at sixty ; Diana de Poictiers, 
 adored by a young prince who could neglect a fair young 
 wife for a woman always old enough to be his mother, and 
 growing on into old age even, without abating one jot of 
 her charm to him ; Cleopatra, who attained her greatest 
 fascination only with ripe years ; Helen of Troy, who was 
 forty years old, and Heaven knew how much more, when 
 her lovers kept the world in arms, these were women 
 who had really swayed men with lasting ascendency, the 
 most powerful of men, and who could thus work their 
 will in the world with even more than a man s autocracy, 
 with the autocracy of the woman who rules the man. 
 
 And these sovereign charmers, the beautiful widow said 
 to herself, had always had two conditions in their lives ; 
 viz., they were old enough to have made exhaustive study 
 of all the weaknesses and caprices of men, by adroit 
 managing of which they swayed them ; and the way of 
 their improper lives had enlarged that study by knowledge 
 of many different men. She herself was now thirty- 
 five, just coming into that accomplished prime of years ; 
 and she had had one husband, who being decorously under 
 ground, she could apply in a second marriage all that she 
 had learned through the failure of her first. 
 
 What this perfectly correct American lady emulated iu 
 those shining names among the improper sisterhood was 
 their power: she thirsted for power. For thus far in 
 her life, with all her beauty, elegance, wealth, and un 
 questioned entrance to society at home and aluxxul, Mrs 
 
232 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Van Cortlandt had been a consciously unsuccessful woman. 
 She could not build up any thing, not a permanent place 
 in a husband s heart, nor the supreme social leadership 
 which she had aspired to : for to win even the latter 
 influence, external advantages alone do not suffice ; there 
 must be talent, energy, sympathy, some qualities more vital 
 than Mrs. Van Cortlandt had ever cultivated in herself. 
 
 SLe had some fantastic notion now of building up the 
 church. The mysterious attraction which that institution 
 seems so often to have for jaded women of the world, 
 their notion of it as an institution especially dependent on 
 feminine patronage, wrought on her mind, inducing her to 
 weave some very curious visions of pageantry round her 
 position as the wife of Kenyon Leigh. The hereditary 
 palaces and other honors naturally appertaining to the 
 highest dignitaries of a State Church, as to the lord- 
 bishops of Mr. Leigh s own church in England, the 
 splendor maintained by Romish cardinals, the brilliant 
 social figure that some of them made, all this, which 
 her long residence abroad had familiarized her with, floated 
 before her fancy as something which she would reproduce 
 in America. 
 
 She well anticipated that she might have a little trouble 
 in ingrafting her plans for making the church imposing in 
 this world on the mind of Kenyon Leigh, who had long 
 ago marked down to an extremely low figure all the time 
 that he could spare for what is called "society." She 
 would find her second husband, of course, like the first, 
 wedded to some of those invisible rivals which every 
 woman had to fight in a husband s heart. If, in this 
 case, the man was not wedded to his club, his cigar, some 
 excitement of masculine sports, or to still more doubtful 
 pleasures, he was wedded to his whims. The fashiona 
 ble woman really called by no more serious name than 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 233 
 
 " whims" the intense absorption of Kenj^on Leigh in 
 his work. De Tocqueville speaks of a certain fine lacty 
 who invariably ran out of any apartment that Napoleon 
 entered, because "he was always talking his l silly poli 
 tics." The man whose topics of conversation did not 
 interest her, though he were Europe s conqueror, wait 
 simply " silly," and no more. 
 
 The woman who proposed, so soon as she should be his 
 wife, admirably to reform the devoted minister of all his 
 " whims " and " silliness," happened to be a very selfish 
 woman. But it is unfortunately true that there has so 
 often been nothing in a woman s own mental training to 
 give her any just notion of the requirements which an 
 intellectual man s tasks make upon his life, that many 
 a wife who by no means deserves to be called mark 
 edly selfish, honestly regards as mere whims (which she 
 pardons more or less as affection rules her) the ab 
 solutely indispensable conditions under which her hus 
 band does his best work. These things being so, the 
 dutiful, domestic, uncritical woman, asking nothing for 
 herself, the genuine satellite wife, has probably deserved 
 all the praises with which her meek brows have so often 
 been crowned by men of talent and ambition hard driven 
 in the ways where those endowments lead. 
 
 Kenyon Leigh had never wanted a satellite wife : satel 
 lites were not only uninteresting to him, but peculiarly 
 oppressive. But he was a hard-driven worker; and Mrs. 
 Van Cortlandt had so regulated her existence before him 
 for the last four years as to suggest that her own natural 
 tastes would choose just that way of life which would 
 blend most undisturbingly with his. 
 
 She was a wife to have been perfectly fatal to the great 
 preacher. High in the hills of God this eagle had his 
 rest ; but he soared on only mortal pinions their flight 
 
234 A EEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 could be broken. This most alien spirit, this poor restlesa 
 woman, had strings to have bound and chafed to death 
 precisely a man like this. 
 
 Did she cherish of intent ruinous designs on the happi 
 ness of the man she proposed to marry ? Oh, no ! her 
 designs were merely for her own happiness. Youth, in 
 its maddest chase after pleasure, never runs quite so 
 desperately as does the elder worldling after some toy 
 which seems to promise deliverance from ennui, that 
 tormentor whose scourge finds out the soul which has 
 successfully lapped itself from every other earthly ill. 
 Indolence which will not rouse itself to any useful activity 
 has been seen to take on the fiercest energy here ; and this 
 disappointed woman of fashion, with her chaotic dreams 
 of the four years past, stood to-night at a point in her life 
 to dare all things for their fulfilling. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 235 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 rr^HE next day was Sunday ; and Monny must go to 
 J- church some time before the hour for service, as she 
 had been playing the church-organ for weeks to allow 
 young Clara Macey to go away and take music-lessons of 
 a master, who, summering in a certain country-place, 
 would take vacation scholars at less than his city prices. 
 This particular morning Mrs. Doanc accompanied Monny 
 in her early walk, not to disturb the decorum of the regu 
 lar meeting-hour by so secular a sight as a tin pail, which 
 she was going to carry filled with broth to a sick man in 
 the village, Skipper Benway. 
 
 Mr. Leigh, to spare Monny the annoyance of local 
 gossip, was not accustomed to walk with her to church, 
 or, indeed, anywhere about the village ; but this morning, 
 seeing how his beloved became with her matronly escort 
 a mere family party to which any general acquaintance 
 might join himself, he snatched his hat and ran down 
 stairs to go early to church likewise. The widow turned, 
 and sanctioned his company by gravely bestowing on him 
 some stalks of the caraway-plant, which she called dill, 
 that herb sacred from immemorial Puritan usage to break 
 the fasts of long sermons. Monny blushed radiant be 
 neath her blue-plumed hat, his gift, she was arrayed, 
 for the rest, in a black silk walking-suit, according to the 
 prophetic milliner, and the three set forth together. 
 
 The road they trod was unfenced, stretching away on 
 either side into such a waste as is this narrowed portion 
 
236 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 of Cape Cod, only a dryer sandbar that the Atlantic haa 
 thrown up, and the beach-grass roped together, to keep 
 the waters from claiming their own again. 
 
 But hints of the coming autumn, which would soon make 
 beautiful with color all the shrubby sand-hills, touched 
 already here and there the wilding bushes which overran 
 them ; land-birds that were half sea-birds rose out of their 
 nests in these thickets, flying over them from bay to 
 ocean, and from ocean back to bay ; out on the great sea- 
 roads white sails were growing and fading in the horizon s 
 blue, or those long smoky banners that an ocean steamer 
 trails, altogether the walk was so delightful to Kenyon 
 Leigh, that he quite forgot its proper place of termination : 
 this, for him, was certainly the foot of the church-gallery 
 stairs. But arrived at that spot), although he really had 
 not premeditated it, some spirit in his feet, some u Whither 
 thou goest I will go," took him straight up the gallery- 
 stairs after Monny. She was a little in advance of him, 
 talking with the male leader of the choir, Capt. Puffer, 
 who had been politely waiting for the young organist at 
 the meeting-house door to give her the hymns, which he 
 had just obtained from the minister. So Mr. Leigh went 
 up into the singers gallery quite on his own invitation ; 
 but, once arrived there, he could not tear himself away. 
 
 It was in itself a most enchanting loft to the New- York 
 churchman. Two hundred years there had been an Ortho 
 dox meeting-house on this site. The first one had a 
 thatched roof, through which the early settlers fired their 
 muskets at the Indians. Of course, though the founda 
 tion-stones were thus ancient, the frame-building had 
 been more than once rebuilt since that primeval thatched 
 structure which had blazed out its gospel to the heathen 
 through the roof. 
 
 Still the present edifice dated so far back as to be a 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 237 
 
 pure specimen of the old Puritan meeting-house in all its 
 barn-like glory. The only thing about it suggesting the 
 present age was the organ, a very good one, but looking 
 quite astray in the old-fashioned high gallery, stretching 
 straight from wall to wall, opposite the pulpit-end of the 
 church, and garnished with obsole e frills of faded red 
 curtain, pushed aside in little huddled flaps here and there 
 along a brass rod ; nobody being moved to so radical a 
 step as taking down these long-d.sused modesties. In 
 all small boys of the congregation, we may remark,* ex 
 isted a deathless and never-quenched desire to sit in the 
 gallery. There were tempting tiers of vacant seats on 
 either side of those occupied by the singers, but Capt. 
 Puffer kept the entire gallery rigorously closed to all but 
 the choir. The Cape-Cod small boy, however, imitating 
 the strategy of " stowaways" on board ship, would some 
 times hide himself in the hold of one of the remoter 
 gallery-pews until the choir was well out to sea, singing 
 the first hymn in full face of the risen congregation. 
 Then the young church stowaway would steal slowly up 
 to view from his hiding under the pew-seat, seeming " to 
 snatch a fearful joy " from the very sight of Capt. Puffer, 
 who with his mouth stretched wide in the delivery of the 
 tenor notes, one hand holding his book, and the other 
 Jjeating time for his band, was certainly powerless to deal 
 with intruders, except by a flash of his wrathful eye, till 
 the hymn was ended. In some of his moods, ho w ever, 
 the musical captain would pounce on such a trespasser so 
 instantly after the conclusion of the hymn, that Mr 
 Leigh, from his seat in the congregation below, had seer, 
 such skirmishings round those gallery-pews as made him 
 avare of the jealousy with which they were guarded 
 against all outsiders. What was he himself, but an out 
 sider, who, in deference to Capt. Puffer s prejudices, ought 
 
238 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 certainly to go below at sermon-time unless he should 
 join the choir? This sudden idea came to the famous 
 preacher of St. Ancient s with a perfect fascination. Such 
 a delicious sense of being 
 
 " Out of the ages of worldly weather, 
 Forgotten of all men altogether," 
 
 would there be in sitting in the singing-seats with his 
 sweetheart, carrying a bunch of dill ! He stuck those 
 greens in his buttonhole, and, gravely taking up a sing 
 ing-book, obediently found the page as Capt. Puffer gave 
 out the tune for the first hymn. 
 
 At this movement the distinguished new addition to the 
 choir was naturally invited to take a head seat ; bat he 
 discreetly declined this honor, choosing his place quite at 
 the foot of the bass force of the choir. 
 
 The rehearsal was not an extended one, only a long 
 metre, a common metre, and a short metre tune for the 
 three hymns of the Orthodox service ; and then the bell 
 began to boom in the belfry overhead, the choir laid down 
 their books, and, while Monny s fingers wandered over the 
 organ-keys into an andante movement from Beethoven, 
 the congregation came into the pews below with an inquir 
 ing glance towards the pulpit to see who was to occupy it 
 to-day ; for the installed pastor of the church had gone 
 this summer to make a long-desired visit to a son married 
 and settled in San Francisco. So the pulpit had been 
 u supplied " ever since Mr. Leigh s sojourn in Lonewater ; 
 the supplies generally representing the two uttermost ex 
 tremes of ministerial experience ; viz., the superannuated 
 old fathers who had retired from the active ministry, and 
 the very young sons who had scarcely entered on it, to 
 wit, theological students who came down by the cars on 
 Saturday night, from Andover and elsewhere, to make theii 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 239 
 
 maiden efforts before this little congregation by the sea. 
 To-day it seemed to be the fathers d^y ; for, with the 
 last strokes of the bell, a white-haired old man walked 
 slowly up the aisle, and took his place in the pulpit. Just 
 in the wake of the minister came Capt. Gawthrop, ad 
 vancing to his well-placed pew in the centre of the house, 
 whose door he held wide while Mrs. Van Cortlandt swept 
 in. her landlord closing the door after her, and turning to 
 seat himself, and such of his family as were with him, 
 elsewhere, discreetly leaving a lady with so grand an air 
 to occupy the pew alone. Mrs. Van Cortlandt certainly 
 had the grand air ; for in regions where that air is held 
 to be quite unmistakable at European courts, for in 
 stance the beautiful American was never taken for any 
 thing less than a duchess, till her nationality was known. 
 
 The proud woman had entered the little meeting-house 
 with but one object, to see Kenyon Leigh, and he was 
 not there unless on the chance that he had come in 
 later than herself, and was seated somewhere behind her. 
 In this hope, glad was the widow when the antique con 
 gregation rose up at the first hymn, and faced round 
 towards the choir to see them sing it. But, thus enabled 
 to sweep the house at a glance, she still believed that he 
 was absent, until, lifting her disappointed eyes in pure 
 ennui towards the high gallery, lo, there she beheld him, 
 the rector of St. Ancient s, perched up in a Cape-Cod 
 conventicle, singing bass at the foot of the choir ! 
 
 Now, Mrs. Van Cortlandt knew Kenyon Leigh quite 
 well enough to know that a freak like this was not charac 
 teristic of him normally. This was true. It was entirely 
 characteristic of him to fill up any scanty Sunday-school 
 library, of whatever sect, that fell in his way, to preach 
 in any sort of meeting-house that asked him, to go walk- 
 ing, in short, over his church-lines, in all directions where 
 
240 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 his business really led him to walk over them. But he 
 never walked over them for mere display. " Go to now, 
 I propose to be a Liberal," was never the style of any of 
 his departures from the conservative ways of his church. 
 His parishioner from St. Ancient s knew, therefore, that, 
 while it might perfectly be expected of Mr. Leigh to 
 officiate at the pulpit-end of this little Cape-Cod church, 
 yet for him to officiate at the singing-end of it was a 
 stretch of broad-churchmanship not to have been expected 
 ol iiim. And she asked, as did Dr. Herophilus over the 
 bandbox, " What did this newness mean? " 
 
 The man, to her knowledge, made no pretensions what 
 ever to tuneful powers. It appeared now, as he warbled 
 away there, that he might have by nature a very good 
 bass voice ; but it is doubtful if he had scarce exercised 
 it before in singing since his college-days. How had he 
 broken out so suddenly as a Presbyterian vocalist? How 
 came the Rev. Kenyon Leigh to be so surprisingly of 
 ficious in that which was not his business ? 
 
 The astonished lady in the congregation pondered these 
 questions with much exercise of mind. To behold the 
 man so familiar to her in the chancel of St. Ancient s, 
 with the great congregation crowding every standing-spot 
 of the edifice, while the grand strains of the Te Deum 
 Laudamus rolled round his head ; to see him aloft under 
 that white-washed roof, singing so painstakingly, in the 
 chopped metres of the Orthodox hymn-book, 
 
 "Let us awake our joys, 
 Strike up Avith cheerful voice, 
 
 Each creature sing; 
 Angels, begin the song, 
 Mortals, the strains prolong, 
 In accents sweet and strong," etc. 
 
 to Mrs. Van Cortlandt this was something of a sight 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 241 
 
 So dutifully he inclined his famed head to follow the lead 
 of that minstrel, the chief bass (a squat sailor, who sang 
 in a voice like the growl of the surges over the bar) ; 
 so softly he brummed away on the more ambitious slurs, 
 and let fly on the notes he was sure of, with a laudable 
 intention to sustain the organist when he could, and not 
 do any harm when he couldn t this was a little of a 
 spectacle. 
 
 Not that it was absurd ; no, the immortal charm 
 which there is in simplicity and right good will, and the 
 inalienable dignity with which these qualities crown any 
 action, made the Rev. Kenyon Leigh never absurd, even 
 when he was in love forty thousand fathoms deep. But 
 if this musical performance of a man whose gifts were 
 not in music escaped the ridiculous (the tradition re 
 mained ever after in this parish, that Mr. Leigh was a 
 magnificent singer, only that he would not let his voice 
 out to throw the rest of the choir in the shade), an all- 
 pervading air of uuusualness about Kenyon Leigh did not 
 escape Mrs. Van Cortlandt. 
 
 Is there some positive coruscation about a lover? Cer 
 tainly the enamoured man in the choir did not once turn 
 his head towards the organist, and most certainly she 
 did not turn hers towards him : nevertheless, the pair of 
 feminine eyes that watched so narrowly from the pew 
 below soon travelled from the man to that young lady 
 who was officiating at the organ. Naturally she could 
 see only her back, the outline of a girlish waist, a rich 
 euil or two of fair hair falling from the simple coil in 
 ^hich most of Monny s tresses were wound up to-day; 
 poised on this Lair a pale-blue plumed hat, whose turn 
 and style suggested the very inside heart of Paris. Of 
 the face, nothing like a full profile-view even could be 
 caught ; only a glimpse now and then of a line of soft 
 
242 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 cheek and throat as the player bent a little this way 01 
 that to manipulate her organ-stops. 
 
 The hymn ended, and Mrs. Van Cortlandt must face 
 away from the choir again, and sit down with the rest, 
 which she did, feeling vaguely startled out of the secure 
 mood in which she had entered the church. Still her 
 apprehensions were but dim ; her opinion of Mr. Leigh s 
 make-up leading her to be peculiarly unafraid of rivals, 
 especially in young girls. Nevertheless, she began to 
 recall for she had immediately decided that the amateur 
 organ-player was that other summer-boarder at the house 
 where Mr. Leigh was staying every item that she had 
 heard concerning the young lady. 
 
 She had first heard of her that morning, in the talk 
 of her maid Tonson while she was dressing her hair. 
 Tonson was a British woman, who had been for years in 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt s service, first as child s nurse, and 
 afterwards promoted, for some marked talents that she 
 possessed, to be the lady s dressing-maid. These talents 
 were not so much in the line of toilet services proper as 
 in another line of gifts sometimes highly valuable in a 
 lady s maid, viz., the gift for gathering gossip to regale 
 ears too polite to gather it for themselves. Tonson s 
 gossip of this morning had seemed to Mrs. Van Cortlandt 
 of but very little value. The maid, who knew perfectly 
 all the matrimonial designs of her mistress, had duly 
 crammed herself the night before in the Gawthrop 
 kitchen, from the lips of the cook, with all details about 
 Mr. Leigh and his boarding-place ; and in the course of 
 this babble the name of Miss Monny Rivers had been 
 often repeated, with all that dressing-up which so popular 
 a star naturally received at the hands of a native boasting 
 to a new-comer of the distinctions of the town in its 
 transient as well as permanent inhabitants. Thus, trans- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 243 
 
 mitted from the kitchen through Tonson, Mrs. Van Cort- 
 landt had heard a long chronicle of the toilets and talents 
 and beauty and beaux of Miss Rivers ; but, so far as she 
 had given a thought to this tiresome heroine at all, she 
 had conceived her to be some very average city i;irl, 
 glorified in the ideas of this primitive region into a beauty 
 and a belle. She gave so much more thought to Miss 
 Rivers now, that she was impatient for the congregation 
 to be dismissed in order to secure a good look at her face. 
 But only the short prayer had yet been, of the Orthodox 
 service ; and long prayer, and Bible-reading, and more 
 hymns must be ; and, when these were got through with, 
 there was the affliction of the sermon to be endured. 
 
 No affliction, no sense of endurance, meanwhile, did 
 the sermon bring in that charmed gallery where sat the 
 famous preacher, and heard, heard how devoutly ! as 
 the dear old soul in the pulpit preached on the everlasting 
 decrees, and proved to a hair, that every good and per 
 fect gift (such as Monny) cometh down from the Father 
 of lights, for no merit or deserving in the receiver, but 
 fore-ordained to him, of Heaven s own divineness, before 
 the world was. And so in the gallery and the pews the 
 sermon went on to its end. The benediction was said, 
 and from the gallery and the pews came the people. 
 
 Mr. Leigh shook hands with Mrs. Van Cortlandt in 
 the church-entry, not far from the foot of the gallery- 
 stairs. The lady, stepping aside a little out of the passing 
 current of the people, as she stood to talk with her rector, 
 it chanced that her back was directly towards the gallery- 
 stairs when Monny presently descended them, chattiug 
 with some of the female singers of the choir alongside 
 and behind her on the rather narrow stairs. Monny s 
 attention being thus diverted, she did not observe whom 
 Mr Leigh was speaking with, until she reached the foot 
 
244 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 of the stairs, where he was waiting expressly to present 
 her to Mrs. Van Cortlandt. Mr. Leigh had mentioned 
 the evening before that a parishioner of his would proba 
 bly come to take rooms for a few weeks at Capt. Gaw 
 throp s ; but he did not know then that she had already 
 arrived, and, although he Inmself had seen her from the 
 gallery when she came into the church, Monny had not 
 seen her: so this introduction was a little sudden to 
 her. 
 
 Now, Monny was a lady, and being presented to a 
 stranger was not ordinarily an ordeal to make her blush 
 with diffidence. But, as she was introduced to Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt, a blush so intense that Mr. Leigh had never 
 seen her blush so before, save once must needs sweep 
 her face, suffusing even her white brow with a faint 
 pink, and fanning her cheeks into that marvellous bright 
 bloom which Monny s color was at its highest. It was, 
 perhaps, the sudden surprise of the lady s great beauty, 
 so impressive to her artist s eye, and partly the fact of 
 her being Mr. Leigh s parishioner, and probably, still 
 more, the peculiar scrutiny with which the long-lashed 
 gray eyes of the New- York stranger explored her young 
 face. Then she blushed, of course, to find herself blush 
 ing ; and, as a part of her little nervous flutter, her left 
 hand (both hands were bare, as she had just come from 
 playing the organ) went up with some unconscious move 
 ment to the curl of hair falling on her shoulder. 
 
 Beautiful women instinctively observe each other s 
 points. They are apt, especially, to observe both the 
 point 1 : in which they themselves excel and those in 
 whi ;h they are deficient. Now, each of these women 
 had in a different way a very rare beauty of complexion. 
 Monny s order of complexion was one common enough 
 among the soft-skinned American girls : the rarity in her 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 245 
 
 case was only in the perfection of the kind : it was the 
 absolute perfection of a transparent rose-and-white skin. 
 But Mrs. Van Cortlandt s complexion was not only a 
 perfect one of its style, but the style itself was extremely 
 rare. The fairest Circassian beauties, perhaps, have 
 something such a skin, of texture and tint so tirm and 
 pure as really to suggest breathing marble, the white 
 ness having only so much of a creamy glow as belongs to 
 the hues of living flesh, and not of stone. Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt, well accustomed to know that her paleness 
 was more beautiful than all the color of most fresh- 
 colored faces, would probably anywhere in the world have 
 noticed a complexion like Monny s, beautiful enough to 
 make her silently debate whether her own was really to 
 be preferred or no. And the beauty of Monny s little 
 hand she would certainly have observed anywhere, for an 
 opposite reason : her own hands were extremely ugly. 
 They were very well in gloves ; kid gloves being appar 
 ently shaped to fit lean and ugly hands. A really beauti 
 ful hand can seldom be perfectly gloved. But one cannot 
 wear gloves always ; and, divested of these coverings, 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt showed a hand so bony and large- 
 jointed as to be hard to the touch even, for all the 
 luxurious softness of her life. And. because of the cur 
 rent notion that hands are peculiarly a sign of lineage, 
 this defect was more vexatious than would be believed 
 to Mrs. Van Cortlandt s pride. 
 
 Now, these two personal points about Monny, which 
 tho widow would have noted anywhere, she had noted 
 somewhere in her life before. Yes, she grew certain that 
 she had seen just that strikingly vivid blush, that peerless 
 hand, yes, that very movement of that hand, before. 
 This impression of reminiscence came to her with her 
 very first look into Monny s flushing face ; and although, 
 
246 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 as that face regained its more normal hues, and the 
 young lady s manner its usual composure, the sense of 
 likeness to some one seen elsewhere was lost a little, still 
 her first impression had been too strong to be shaken : 
 somewhere on the earth Mrs. Van Cortlandt was sure she 
 had beheld this girl before ; where, she could not as yet 
 recall. But, as she stood uttering her graceful common* 
 places to the maiden, she was inwardly following that 
 laffling clew of suggestion, feeling that she should yet 
 seize it when she was alone. 
 
 Meanwhile, as the two ladies exchanged the conven 
 tional remarks of a first introduction, Mr. Leigh turned 
 to greet one and another who had waited, out of the 
 little congregation, to pay their Sunday respects to him. 
 There were such a number of these, and they had such 
 manner of communications to make, as almost to suggest 
 that the rector of St. Ancient s had "taken duty" al 
 this Orthodox church. And indeed, although he had 
 never yet preached in its pulpit, he had attended so cor 
 dially to some contingencies of more private ministerial 
 service which had befallen in the absence of the regular 
 pastor, that the latter had been enabled to prolong his 
 California visit for an extra period, through the kindness 
 of this distinguished sojourner in his parish. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt had not lost a movement of Mr. 
 Leigh s since Monny came down-stairs ; and, guarded as 
 was his manner in public towards the maiden, the widow 
 had yet discerned some hints in that manner which did 
 not add to her tranquillity. Possibly something of a 
 lover s pride would pierce even through the mere little 
 ceremonial of introducing the young lady to his New- 
 York parishioner. And then again, while he was engaged 
 with those villagers who had staid to speak to him, he 
 stooped once, and picked up the girl s pocket-hand ker- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 247 
 
 chief for her as it was accidentally dropped. This waa 
 certainly the slightest and most ordinary of all conven 
 tional courtesies due from gentlemen to ladies ; but for 
 Kenyon Leigh to render that courtesy just then was not 
 an ordinary thing, as Mrs. Van Cortlandt knew. Cer 
 tainly, as a well-bred man, Mr. Leigh dutifully picked 
 up the pocket-handkerchiefs of contiguous ladies, when 
 he saw them fall ; but he was extremely apt not to see 
 them. And the angle of vision to him at which that 
 pocket-handkerchief had fallen, as he stood turned away 
 from the ladies, giving audience to his villagers, was an 
 angle at which he never would have perceived the fall of 
 a feminine pocket-handkerchief in the past. 
 
 There are two classes of men who can see a lady s 
 movements perfectly well with the back of their heads. 
 One is the lover, who has this remarkable vision with 
 respect to one particular woman only ; and the other is 
 what may be called the born lover of the whole sex. 
 This latter man, in the atmosphere of charming women, 
 is genuinely pre-occupied with them, finds every thing 
 else less charming : he cannot miss any chance of serving 
 them, because he never for an instant forgets them. The 
 assiduities of this knight when he is a man, and not a 
 mere beauish monkey make the petits soins dear to the 
 hearts of women (or just as dear to their vanity, when 
 they have no hearts) ; for the evident fact that he pleases 
 himself in the pleasing courtesies he renders is the most 
 delicate of all possible tributes. 
 
 Mr. Leigh had never belonged to this class of men. 
 No : it must be confessed concerning him, that Eve was 
 not more distinctly a new creation to Adsjn, when he 
 first beheld her in the garden, than had been woman to 
 Ken^on Leigh in the person of Monny Rivers, when he 
 Woke from his deep sleep of thirty- four years to watch 
 
248 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 that maiden walking under Mrs. Doane s apple-trees, and 
 see in her the incarnation of a sex whom it was man a 
 one want and joy to wait on. A being whom he was 
 possessed by a desire to communicate with, to make her 
 look 1 1 him, if only in anger the impossibility of losing 
 her out of his own consciousness made it somehow un 
 bearable to be himself lost out of hers. He would have 
 lik^d her to spill her pocket-handkerchiefs from morning 
 till night, that he might recall himself to her by picking 
 them up. Such having been his state of mind in those 
 early days, naturally, in the present riper ones, he had 
 so blossomed in petits soins towards Monny, that he for 
 got himself even in the church-entry, far enough to use 
 his lover s faculty of following her every motion whether 
 she was within his apparent optical range or not. And 
 this new grace of gallantry in Kenyon Leigh was noted 
 by the widow as something which had certainly descended 
 on him since she saw him last. What was its quality and 
 extent? she mused. Had the back of his head become 
 transmittant of vision as to all fair women, or only one? 
 
 Silently she pondered this question, but finally decided 
 not to drop her own pocket-handkerchief to see. 
 
 The trio all went home by separate ways after leaving 
 the church-entry. That is, Mr. Leigh lifted his hat in 
 farewell to Mrs. Van Cortlandt only a short distance be 
 yond the meeting-house grounds, leaving her then to go 
 along the main street to Capt. Gawthrop s, while he 
 turned up the lane leading to Skipper Benway s cottage. 
 For Mrs. Doane had spoken a word to him after church, 
 reporting the sick man, who was dying of a rapid con 
 sumption, as enjoying one of his more comfortable days, 
 and desirous to see Mr. Leigh, whom he had conceived a 
 great adoration for, if he could conveniently call after 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 240 
 
 morning church. Accordingly, the minister was going 
 round that way before returning home ; while, jvs for 
 Monny, her way was along the main street, in the oppo 
 site direction. 
 
 The lady she had just parted with had stirred no 
 memory whatever in the girl s mind of having been seen 
 before : nevertheless, on Monny s side too, the interview 
 had left very peculiar impressions. So she was not sorry 
 to-day to part soon from the village acquaintances whose 
 way joined hers for a little along the main street, and to 
 go on alone with her absorbing thoughts over the quiet 
 road which took her home. 
 
250 A EEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 MRS. DOANE had reached home somewhat earlier 
 than Monny did ; and having seen that the luncheon- 
 table, which Susannah had spread, was all right, on 
 Sunday dinner was served between four and five o clock, 
 she had gone up-stairs to water some house-plants 
 which filled a window in the little upper hall of the house, 
 and which the extra duties of Sunday morning had left 
 untended till now. She was moving the plants out of the 
 direct sunshine, that watering at this meridian hour might 
 not injure them, when Monny arrived, and came musingly 
 up the stairs, breaking impulsively out of her revery, 
 when she saw the widow, with, 
 
 l - O aunt Persy ! did you see how perfectly beautiful is 
 that friend of Mr. Leigh s, the lady who has come to 
 board at Capt. Gawthrop s? " 
 
 " Yes, I saw her," said Mrs. Doane, plucking a with 
 ered leaf or two from a luxuriant begonia. " She has a 
 face to be seen." 
 
 The most wonderful perfect face of a woman I ever 
 saw in this whole world! " cried enthusiastic Monny as 
 she dropped into a chair. 
 
 "Do you really think that she is handsomer than you 
 are?" involuntarily asked the matron, looking down on 
 the girl, who sat radiant in the reflected lights of the 
 sunny window, making to Mrs. Doane s partial fanc3 r a 
 picture much more attractive than the lofty lad^ who had 
 sat so coldly alone in Capt. Gawthrop s pew. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 251 
 
 "Me! me!" cried Monny, seeming to find more ex 
 clamatory power in somewhat doubtful grammar. "My 
 face hasn t the very first foundation of handsome, which 
 is a nose." 
 
 " Now, Miss Monny, whatever is the matter with youi 
 nose?" asked the widow, pausing, watering-pot in hand, 
 to examine this hitherto unsuspected deficiency in Jie fair 
 face before her. " I m sure it isn t a crooked nose ; and 
 it s neither too big, nor yet too small." 
 
 " Look at Mrs. Van Cortlandt s nose, and oh the line 
 it makes with her forehead and her upper lip ! " cried the 
 artist adoringly, "and then you will see what s the 
 matter with my nose and all my face. See what it would 
 go to in marble my face ! " pronounced the girl, with the 
 most impersonal air of settling that physiognomy forever. 
 " Let any sculptor make an exact portrait head of me, 
 and then you would see that I haven t a feature, not a 
 feature." 
 
 " Oh ! " was all that the Cape-Cod woman could reply ; 
 since, in her idea of the meaning of words, Monny s ex 
 pressive face was the very last face in the world that could 
 be called featureless. Then she silently concluded it a 
 wise provision of Heaven, to save from the snare of vanity 
 a girl whose looks had been praised ever since she was 
 born, that she should rate herself at this nothingness. 
 
 " But if you were to cut Mrs. Van Cortlandt s face out 
 in wood or paper," Monny went on, " draw the barest out 
 line of it any thing that would show its .beautiful forms 
 would show all the wonderful perfect face it is. Real 
 beauty is bred in the bone," declared the artist. " It 
 is not true at all, that it is merely skin deep. Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt s complexion is beautiful as the moonlight on 
 the snow : but, if the flesh of her face was all faded anJ 
 fuirowed and shrunken, you would still see the perfect 
 
252 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 structure beneath ; some of its beauty can never, never 
 die. That is a face to have ! " concluded the maid, with 
 such a lowly sigh Mrs. Doane sufficiently forgot the prof 
 itableness of small self-esteem in young ladies as to their 
 looks, to say, 
 
 "Now, Miss Monny, do you not know what a pretty 
 g> :! you are yourself ? 
 
 Oh anybody can be a pretty girl !" replied Monny 
 slightingly, "any girl who has not a particularly bad 
 complexion, or awkward figure, or some such severe draw 
 back. Prettiness is cheap as can be. You have only 
 to consider your own personal points a little, so as to wear 
 what is most becoming. But a beautiful woman, beauti 
 ful as Mrs. Van Cortlandt is beautiful, need not dress 
 at all ; that is, she can wear the very costume of the 
 noblest art, which is always mere plain drapery. And 
 she can put her hair away all smooth and close, without a 
 wave or a crinkle, into a simple low knot behind, and look 
 like a queen as well as a Madonna, every thing that is 
 elegant, as well as every thing that is most spiritually 
 lovely. Indeed, to wear your hair as opposite as possible 
 to the prevailing fashion especially when you wear it in 
 the direction of simplicity, and the fashion is elaborate 
 will always make a woman look either perfectly distin 
 guished, or perfectly dowdy ; only, in ninety-nine women 
 out of a hundred, it will have merely the dowdy effect. 
 You see, all the elaborations of coiffure, all adornments of 
 dress of every kind, have been invented, not in the interest 
 of the truly beautiful woman, but to make the best of 
 all the flimsy order of looks such as mine," concluded 
 Monuy, with another of those abased sighs that she had 
 been heaving during this colloquy. 
 
 So dejected was it, Mrs. Doane again so forgot her 
 prudence as to say, " Now, my dear, do you really con- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 253 
 
 sider yourself one of those girls whose good looks are all 
 in their furbelows? Many s the time that I ve thought 
 you look prettier wheu you come running home from the 
 beaeh through the rain, in your oldest black waterproof 
 cloak, than in most anything you wear. And although 
 that New- York hat you ve got on to-day is mighty becom 
 ing (and I never saw you in a regular dressed-up hat that 
 was more so), still the white gypsy Mr. Leigh brought you 
 is a grain prettier on you still ; for I ve always noticed 
 you - everyday hats are a little more becoming to you than 
 any dressed-up hat, howsoever pretty." 
 
 "That s because I ve got no features, and wide hat- 
 brims harmonize me a little." 
 
 Harmonizing hat-brims were to Mrs. Doane a flight 
 beyond even Monuy s recurring monomania about destitu 
 tion of features, so she found no answer to make ; and the 
 girl murmured, in an under-current of thought, 
 
 " But I can t wear wide hat-brims to church, nor old 
 black waterproof cloaks. And the style which does not 
 become me, aunt Persy," she added with conviction, "is 
 the dressed-up style of grave dignity ; such a style as 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt s, which is dressed up, I mean, in 
 the sense of its being a proper attire to appear at church 
 in, or in a city street. All those full Watteau folds and 
 wide-hanging sleeves of her plain mantle had the simplest 
 majestic grace on her, but they would mop me up into 
 the dowdiest bundle. I haven t the figure for it." 
 
 "Now, Miss Monny, there never could be a mortal 
 woman with a better shape than yours, down to the end 1 ! 
 of your fingers." 
 
 "You have to dress to your face," insisted the young 
 Hebe, " 3 T onr whole general appearance; and you wjuld 
 sec that my figure is not equal to that style of dress. I 
 am not tall enough for very long lines in my costume, 
 
254 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 except when I wear a train. But Mrs. Van Cortlandt, 
 without adding an inch of train to her native height, in 
 just a street walking-dress, is tall enough for all the lines 
 made by long hanging veils and Watteau mantles. It is 
 a great gift," sighed Monny again so deeply, Mrs. Doane 
 laughed out, 
 
 4 Child, I think you have gone out of your head, 
 a most, about that lady. She is a very imposing-looking 
 person, I grant. But the Lord has made us all : and she 
 has no greater Maker than the humblest," declared the 
 widow, secretly wondering if the strange lady could have 
 dared to look at Monny with any such haughty stare as 
 she had turned on herself in the church-entry ; for Mrs. 
 Doane had been obliged to deliver her sick man s message 
 to Mr. Leigh while he stood there talking with his New- 
 York parishioner. 
 
 "Indeed, aunt Persy," solemnly insisted Monny, "it 
 is a very great gift to have such a face and figure as 
 that ; for it enables you to follow in your very dress the 
 law of the grand simplicities. You do not have to modify 
 it to your own imperfections and small style. You see, 
 with most women, dress must always be a compromise 
 between their taste in the abstract and the necessity of 
 considering their own personal peculiarities. That fact 
 does not seem to be always recognized," said Monny, 
 with the gravity which she put into all this arguing. " I 
 remember, for instance, to have read in a social essay by 
 some man, that you could judge of a woman s character 
 more by the way she wore her hair than by any thing 
 else. Now, that is not true, except with very important 
 modifications," declared Monny weightily. "It is true, 
 for example, that plain hair on the brow looks serious 
 and simple ; while crimps, by comparison, look frivolous 
 and artificial. But it is also true that fluffed hair softens 
 
A KEVEREND IDOL. 255 
 
 the line of the forehead, and can be arranged over it so 
 as to bring many an imperfect face into a little truer 
 measurements," urged the artist. u So, although nobody 
 would ever think of painting the Virgin Mary with little 
 curls dropping over her forehead, or such a face as Mrs. 
 Van Cortlandt s, all whose divisions are true to the abso 
 lute ideal of art crimps are yet favorable to my fore 
 head, for instance, which is too high " 
 
 Patiently, even on the Lord s Day, had the pious 
 Orthodox dame listened to these themes thus far; but 
 Monny s last point of self-criticism seemed to her com 
 pletely crazy. 
 
 4 i Really, now! if a good broad forehead isn t a fine 
 point in a woman, as showing that there s room in her 
 head for sense, what is?" broke in the astonished New- 
 England woman, who could never have been brought to 
 appreciate the Greek ideal of feminine beauty. "La, 
 child ! if you will put an extra touch, sometimes, on your 
 natural curly locks with crimping-pins, and shake them 
 down in a way that does no justice at all to your fore 
 head, I can stand it ; because, as soon as ever you get 
 absorbed in any thing, you push your hair right up, and 
 show what a nice full forehead you ve got under the 
 crimps," said Mrs. Doane, comfortably informing Monny 
 what a dead failure was her simulation of a Greek brow. 
 " What I was going to say was, crinkly hair, one way or 
 another, is as natural to you as straight hair to that tall 
 lady, who certain is too tall to have curls and crimps 
 flying. I thought myself, when I first saw her standing 
 up in the church, with her head clear up to the heads of 
 the men, and quite above so many of em, that she was 
 too lull a woman ever to look well anyway," declared the 
 widow, unable to forbear this small dig of criticism at 
 the lady who had so managed to upset Monny s usually 
 
256 A KEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 well-balanced sense. " She looked all right, to be sure, 
 when she stood by Mr. Leigh in the entry. I grant that, 
 put her beside him, they make a pair most striking and 
 grand to look at," repeated good Mrs. Doaiie, being 
 already conscientiously moved to soften the invidious 
 remark she had let slip about a stranger, and Mr. Leigh s 
 parishioner. 
 
 4 Missis, missis!" here sounded in startling outcry 
 from the foot of the stairs. " De ole yaller hen dat s 
 been missin dese tree weeks, jess come cluckin up to de 
 back door, grand as can be, wid ten new chickens ! De 
 pore ole fool ! when de winter storms ll be blowin afore 
 ebber dey grow dere fedders ! " At this summons frorr 
 Susannah, the matron quitted her plants and the maiden ; 
 for the latter did not follow her down-stairs, even so excit 
 ing an event as a brood of late chickens not having power to 
 draw Monny out of the present current of her thoughts. 
 
 Mrs. Doane s last words had inadvertently struck the 
 very keynote of all those thoughts. Monny had seen 
 nothing all the way home from church but just those two 
 figures beside each other, Mr. Leigh and Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt. They were emphatically, as to looks, a man 
 and woman of whom all beholders sensitive to harmoni 
 ous looks involuntarily think, " AVhat a pair they would 
 make!" Both of them were so above, respectively, tbe 
 average stature of man and woman, yet so perfectly pu- 
 portioned to each other in height, to see* them as they 
 stood, the man glorious in his strength, the woman in her 
 great beauty, one might say indeed that the gods had 
 ( ome down to dwell among men. And there were even 
 finer correspondences to the eye in the pair than these : 
 for, if Mr. Leigh had an air of nobleness which is never 
 found independent of character, Mrs. Van Cortlandt had an 
 air of fine distinction ; and, although that air can perfectly 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 257 
 
 exist without any character at all, the difference between 
 it and the former mien is not always discernible at first 
 glance, even by more experienced observers than an 
 ardent girl. 
 
 Monny could not doubt in these days that Mr. Leigh 
 had chosen herself to be his wife, without doubting the 
 honor of the man. Nor in these days could this young 
 heart conceive of the remarriage of a? widow but as a 
 profanation. Monny had not got far enough yet in this 
 world of mistakes to know how often a second marriage 
 is a much truer one than the first. But if the maiden s 
 fancy could not whisper of her own lover and of this 
 woman shrined in her widowhood, " She might be a wife 
 for Mr. Leigh," it did whisper, "Mr. Leigh s wife ought 
 to look like that." 
 
 Monny had forgotten that there was any human opinion 
 for her outside of the approval of one man : the world of 
 persons, since she had fallen in love, had been all simpli 
 fied to her into one person, whom alone she cared to 
 please, until now, when her very absorption in this sole 
 being suddenly caused her such a solicitude about the 
 opinion of others as she had never felt before in all her 
 life. The sense of a world fastidious and critical, to 
 whose judgment she was exposed in a new, strange way, 
 and with some new, strange need to be honored in it that 
 another might not lose honor through her, this feeling 
 had begun in her with that first searching glance of Mrs. 
 Van Cortlandt, which had so troubled her young cheek 
 with blushes ; and its trouble wrought obscurely in her 
 jtill. She went now to her own room ; and. in our aim to 
 confess unto all the truth as it is in woman, it must be 
 confessed that she marched straight to the looking-glass 
 there, and took a long survey of herself, first in the hat 
 ste had worn to church, then in the other hat which Mr. 
 
258 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Leigh had brought her. Still worse, she even proceeded 
 to the trying-on of some of her old hats, Gainsboroughg 
 and gypsies, pretty caprices of head-rigging for out-of- 
 town summer-wear. As Monny tried on these girlish 
 hats, seeing all the while above her head in the glass that 
 Madonna face of the lady from St. Ancient s, she seemed 
 to herself a very cheap person, that she should have the 
 kind of face which this coquettish manner of hats espe 
 cially became, things that you could no more imagine on 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt s head, she inwardly reflected, than 
 on the Mater Dolorosa s. There was, indeed, some sub 
 stance of truth, probably, in the girl s artist-remark about 
 the harmonizing effect of wide hat-brims on irregular 
 features ; for it was noticeable that any hat broad enough 
 to isolate, as it were, her radiant face, made a picture of 
 Monny at once ; while the close-brimmed, conventional 
 little piece of millinery, half hat, half bonnet, which was 
 the most correct shape of the time for street-wear, was 
 only truly becoming to her in a hat as exquisitely chosen 
 as was that blue trimmed chip, in buying which Mr. Leigh 
 had shown such powers of divination. There began to 
 be a little poignancy, even in the tender thoughts which 
 had made these remarkable lover s gifts so deeply sacred 
 to Monny. Mr. Leigh, perhaps, wished her to know, she 
 mused, that he was content for her to wear such hats as 
 would make the best of her ; but doubtless he would 
 have been more content if she had had a face which could 
 afford to be as indifferent about its bonnet as Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt. 
 
 In making these disclosures of the mental exercises of 
 a young lady on coming home from church, we have 
 nowhere attempted to disguise the fact that they had to 
 do with very sadly superficial matters. Nor can it be 
 disguised, as we go onward with her history, thuit here the 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 259 
 
 girl s fate struck her, in her sensitive desire overween 
 ing, if it must be called so to be just what she should 
 be in the mere external appearance. The woman who 
 was to meddle so darkly with her fate began her power 
 over her at this point, and began it from the very first 
 moment. 
 
 No conscious reserve or discount was in Monny s admi 
 ration for Mr. Leigh s beautiful parishioner, who seemed 
 to her at all points the perfect ideal of womanhood. But 
 the perfect beings who send their admirers home with a 
 particularly severe consciousness that their noses are out 
 of joint, and an impulse to try on all their head-gear to 
 see if there is any thing in which their insignificance may 
 dare stand before them, must be classed among those 
 beings who impress their own perfections as a standard 
 from which it is a sign of defect to vary. Whether one 
 woman who feels herself criticised by another is always 
 moved to consider first if something in her dress may not 
 be amiss, we need not decide. Certain it was, that all 
 Mouny s babble on that subject to-day had been moved 
 by Mrs. Van Cortlandt ; and apparently her soul was not 
 fully eased yet, for she went down-stairs now from the 
 looking-glass to babble a little more. 
 
 " Aunt Persy," she resumed, finding the old lady just 
 returned to the sitting-room, after reviewing the autumn 
 chickens, "you see, aunt Persy, besides all the rest, 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt s style of dress is that of a very 
 select upper few in society : it is the shabby aristocratic 
 style, which is the most exclusive of any thing." 
 
 "Oh"! " rejoined the widuw, to whom the conjunction of 
 those two adjectives conveyed no very definite meaning. 
 
 " I did not suppose it prevailed so much in New York 
 as in jome other places," thoughtfully added the young 
 lady. " In Moralmount, for instance, some of the finest, 
 
260 A KEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 the truly finest, ladies always dress with that distin 
 guished shabbiness on the street ; and it is a style very 
 characteristic of the great ladies in Europe, in England 
 especially, if ever they go out on foot at all in the city." 
 
 "You are talking about the people who have seen 
 better days?" hazarded the Cape-Cod woman, groping 
 after a little clearer idea as to what the shabby aristocrat 
 was. 
 
 " Oh, no, no! not the shabby genteel style. It is just 
 the opposite. It is a despising of the genteel, a horror of 
 smartness as something too common, too much within 
 the reach of everybody. So the greatest ladies, who can 
 afford any thing, and who dress magnificently, of course, 
 on all dress occasions, show such an utter indifference to 
 looks and fashion in their walking-attire as no merely well- 
 off merchant s wife would ever do. I suppose," Monny 
 went on musingly, "this refined dowdiness originated at 
 first in a truly good and sensible idea, that of shun 
 ning the real vulgarity there is in very elegant dressing 
 on the street, as if you had nowhere else to show your 
 fine clothes. But what the refined dowdy style has devel 
 oped into is an affected style of plainness, not affected 
 by Mrs. Van Cortlandt, but by most ladies, a kind of 
 carelessness in dress, which is very carefully studied in 
 deed, and one of the most laborious of all styles to follow. 
 It would be for me, at least. I should make mistakes in 
 it : I should never remember to observe what was the last 
 new wrinkle it had adopted to show itself above the 
 fashion. Certainly, as a shabby aristocrat, I should be a 
 most dead failure," declared Monny dejectedly. " But," 
 slowly added the girl after an anxious pause, "it is a 
 style of dress that to the general eye looks most plain and 
 unpretending, while to the select few it looks select : so I 
 suppose it would recommend one all round. It would 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 261 
 
 seem to set a good example. I have never thought 
 about setting examples, I have not been of consequence 
 enough," murmured Monny, still with a troubled look in 
 her hazel eyes, as she stood leaning meditatively over the 
 baok of a chair. 
 
 The old woman, guessing well the future into which 
 those young eyes were looking to-day, divining what 
 made these very new phrases on Monny s lips alv^nt 
 r< .commend ing herself to all people, had patience still, as 
 she had had patience up-stairs, with what would otherwise 
 have seemed to her absurdly undue earnestness on the 
 most trivial of themes. And she was glad to hear just 
 now that quick, impetuous clash of the gate which gener 
 ally announced Mr. Leigh s coming, trusting that the 
 presence of the minister would dispel the disquiet which 
 his parishioner had unmistakably brought. 
 
 " Miss Monny has been wondering, sir, whether all the 
 ladies in your church have such faces as the lady who has 
 come to board at Capt. Gawthrop s," said Mrs. Doane. 
 speaking first, as Mr. Leigh came in. 
 
 "Probably not," he returned, smiling. "I believe 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt is everywhere acknowledged to be 
 very exceptionally handsome." 
 
 4 Beautiful, perfectly beautiful," murmured Monny, a 
 little wondering that a man who usually chose his words 
 so well did not choose the higher and more appropi iate 
 adjective. 
 
 B it there was only one woman in the world who was 
 beautiful at present to Kenyon Leigh ; and he had used 
 the highest word he could afford, even for Mrs. Van 
 
 Cortlandt. 
 
 ^ 
 
 The New- York widow went from the church-entry to 
 her lodgings in quite as absorbed a mood as Monny had 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 walked home to hers : she was wrapped in an intense effort 
 to make memory restore intact that broken chain of im 
 pressions which so haunted her. She caught the links at 
 last. Time, place, all the extraordinary circumstances in 
 which she had once seen a young girl like this Monny 
 Rivers, rushed clear and distinct on her mind. She had 
 seen her five years before, afar in a Southern city ; and she 
 had seen her on her journey to that city, so strange a 
 journey, so strangely accompanied, it was an immense 
 discovery to Mrs. Van Cortlandt, the discovery that this 
 fellow-boarder of Mr. Leigh s was identical with the 
 heroine of those remarkable travels. Was she the same 
 girl? could she be mistaken in a likeness which had 
 struck her, however confusedly, with the very first sight 
 of that face in the church-entry? 
 
 Ere nightfall this question, which grew a burning one 
 to the widow, was positively answered. It happened thus. 
 Tonson went out in the long Sunday afternoon to take a 
 small airing on her own account, and returned to say, 
 
 u I reckon, my lady, that Miss Rivers comes over after 
 noons to lead the Sunday-school singing at the church. 
 For I card the closing ims of the children through the 
 windows, and see em all streamin out pretty soon, an* 
 among em a young lady, from whose looks I said to 
 myself, c That must be the belle to Mr. Leigh s boarding- 
 place they talk so much about/ So asking one of the 
 children, and findin twas her indeed, I made bold to asfr 
 the young lady herself, wen she came along, what was the 
 nearest way to the water-side." 
 
 The useful servitor, having well discovered that her 
 mistress came in from church in the morning vastly more 
 interested in Miss Rivers than when she went out, had 
 waylai 1 the latter on purpose thus to establish some speak 
 ing acquaintance with the } 7 oung lady whom she might have 
 occasion to watch. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 263 
 
 "And the moment she spoke," Tonsori went on, 
 " Lord, if it didn t come to me as if I d seen that 
 young lady before ! Yes, when she turned round, and 
 went back with me a little piece to show where the road 
 went off, all her ways kep giving me that blind kind of 
 feeling as if Itl seen em before. But I couldn t nowise 
 remember where, till sudden a little mite of a boy came 
 runniu out of a ouse, and called out to her, i Ow oo 
 do, Mitli Monny Wiverth ? Oo want to make my picter 
 again? An wen I card that lispin child, I knew in a 
 minnit just where I d seen her. Twas in New Orleans, 
 to the St. Charles Otel, five years ago, wen little Alfie 
 (Mrs. Van Cortlandt s one child) was alive, an I was his 
 nurse, an you ad Celeste for a maid, an we went to New 
 Orleans, an this Miss Rivers was there to the St. Charles, 
 where we staid. But of course you didn t notice her 
 yourself." 
 
 The pulses of the languid lady, who was sitting at the 
 moment on, the edge of the bed, had quickened with great 
 throbs at these words ; but she said, with all outward in 
 difference, " I have been asleep. And my hair has fallen 
 down. Brush it out well, and put it up again. You think 
 you saw this Miss Rivers in New Orleans five years ago? 
 What did you ever see in the girl, Touson, to make you 
 remember her such a length of time?" 
 
 u Well, my lady," volubly replied the maid, as she 
 wielded the brushes, "I appened across her pretty often 
 UD that otel wen I was leading little Alfie round the ve- 
 randay to take the air, an he asked her, the way little 
 children do. wot her name was. An though I Vard that 
 name last night, over and over, from Annah in the kitchen, 
 I card it with no sense nor knowledge that I d ever eatd 
 it before, till that lispin child, runnin out just now, was 
 like little Alfie calliu out of his grave again a most them 
 
264 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 same words. For you see, one mornin to that 
 Orleans otel, wen she stepped out on the venmduy where 
 I was walkin , little Alfie broke away from me, an run up 
 to her, an says he, Ow oo do, Mith Monny Wiverth ? 
 An I remember as she stooped down an* kissed him. an* 
 stood a-pettin him, she said, What a picture he would 
 make ! They do say she s a regular hartist ; and pictures 
 always ruunin in her ead perhaps made her speak that 
 way to New Orleans, an that little pipin child to-day, I 
 s pose she s took the picture of some time." 
 
 Even when the rattling lips in her ear touched on those 
 reminiscences of her dead child, the absorbed listener 
 heard only what related to the schemes which she would 
 hide close even from this minion of hers. So, noncha 
 lantly as ever, she rejoined to the latter, 
 
 "I will have some lavender-water, Tonson. So you 
 really fancy the girl you have been talking of was this 
 same Miss Rivers ? 
 
 " Certain of it, my lady, no fancy at all. I remem 
 bered it all up comin ome just now, how twas with 
 Mrs. Bingham of New York that she was stayin there 
 to that St. Charles Otel. An there was with em, off 
 and on, another young lady and young gentleman. Twin 
 brother and sister they were, an about one and twenty, 
 I should say, for age, an as andsome as pictures, both 
 of em. An they was orphans, an belonged to Balti 
 more, but ad come down to New Orleans about the : r 
 property, which a rich uncle, just dying there, ad left 
 em ; an their names was De Lancey. The young gentle 
 man s name, I remember, was Mr. Carroll De Lancey." 
 
 The circumstantial memory is likely to be nowhere 
 ft-und in such perfection as in the lady s-maid and valet- 
 de-chambre class ; for the ignorant mind being vacant 
 of all subjects of thought, and the hands untaxed by any 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 265 
 
 arduous labors, the whole mental activity expends itself 
 in watching persons, the world of fine persons, which 
 feeds curiosit} 7 the more, because it is at once in such 
 juxtaposition to, and so utterly rcmo/ed from, the ser 
 vant s life. Thus no human testimony could have been 
 more absolutely conclusive than the babble of this gar 
 rulous maid, overflowing with details, and giving, at last, 
 the very names which proved, beyond all possibility of 
 doubt, the identity of Miss Rivers with that girl whom 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt had so suspected and hoped that she 
 was. 
 
 It required a silent moment for even this cool woman so 
 to master her sensations as to say, still carelessly, 
 
 "Of course, Tonson, you said nothing to Miss Rivers 
 about your notion of having seen her before? " 
 
 " Laws, no, my lady ! I ope I know my place better," 
 promptly replied Tonson, who had the true British lower- 
 class instinct for abasing one s self before " betters." "I 
 just turned round and come home, quite struck up with 
 thinking how curious it was to ave met liis same young 
 lady way down to New Orleans^ an way tre to Cape Cod 
 a-boardiu with Mr. Leigh." 
 
 " I was introduced to Miss Rivers at that meeting-house 
 this morning," slowly pronounced Mrs. Van Cortlaudt. 
 " She is supposed, therefore, to be of my personal ac 
 quaintance at present. There is no reason why I should 
 appear to take any especial interest in her." 
 
 tk Laws, no, my lady ! by no means," briskly replied the 
 maid, perfectly understanding this as a direction to her 
 self to do all possible watching of Miss Rivers that could 
 be done, without appearing to watch her, and without in- 
 w olviiig her principal. 
 
 "I remember," Tonson gossiped on, u aving a notion 
 down there to New Orleans that the andsome young 
 
266 A EEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 gentleman, Mr. Carroll De Lancey, was the lover of tliat 
 young girl whom it seems was Miss Rivers. But I sup 
 pose it wasn t so, or nothin came of it, seeing that she s 
 unmarried yet. Twas in the care of Mrs. Bingham, I 
 s pose, that she went on that long journey to New Orleans ; 
 for I remember well that she came away with her : so, of 
 course, she went there with her." 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt knew that Monny Rivers did not 
 travel to New Orleans with Mrs. Bingham, but in far 
 other company ; but she made no reply, except to indicate 
 that she had had a sufficiency of lavender-water. 
 
 Tonson put away the lavender-water, guessing no more 
 than that bottle in her hand the deep plot which was 
 slowly taking shape inside the proud head whose outside 
 she had been laving. The young girl whom this poor 
 tool had so artfully contrived to meet and accost, she had 
 no malice against : her only aim was to serve her own 
 mistress (who rewarded lavishly certain services) ; and all 
 the dark extent to which she had served that lady mistress 
 to-day, it was quite beyond Tonson s humble wits, cun 
 ning though they were, to imagine. 
 
A KEVEKESD IDOL. 267 
 
 CHAPTER XVH. 
 
 MR. LEIGH politely called on his parishioner sojourn 
 ing in a strange place, the very next day ; and never 
 had she seen him in brighter spirits or more cordial humor. 
 But his manner profoundly alarmed the lady who had 
 come to Cape Cod to marry him. In truth, nothing is 
 more hopeless for the bark of sentiment to put to sea on 
 than a certain particularly unchecked flood of good will in 
 the behavior of a being of the opposite sex : love is not 
 the shore to which that loud ocean of kindness rolls. 
 
 Possibly, too, the heart rang hollow from beneath all 
 those genial phrases of the caller, with some of that hol- 
 lowness which is wont to lurk in the best conversational 
 efforts of lovers with other than the beloved object. 
 Touches of a pre-occupation, which was not quite the old 
 pre-occupation of the man of books and study ; slight 
 lapses of forge tfulness, too hastily and brilliantly covered 
 not to be a little conscious, signs like these may have 
 betrayed the man guilty of that abominable affront of 
 talking fluently with one woman while all his thoughts are 
 with another. At all events, when her friendly caller 
 departed, black was the mood of Mrs. Van Cortlandt. 
 Miss Rivers had not been mentioned during the interview, 
 since Mr. Leigh certainly would not bring Monny s name 
 casually into the conversation, and as vot he had no ac 
 knowledged right to speak of her otherwise than casually ; 
 while the widow, silently debating whether to make some 
 allusion to the young fellow-boarder, to see how Mr. Leigh 
 
268 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 would be affected by it, or to ignore the girl as a being too 
 unimpoitant to be inquired after, finally decided on the 
 latter course, for she was a woman strong enough to let 
 policy control her curiosity, even in a matter that she had 
 a consuming desire to know more about. But her jealous 
 thoughts fastened more and more persistently on that girl, 
 and on the weapon which fate had strangely put into her 
 own hand to strike the rival down, if this astounding 
 thing could be true, that she had a rival, and in a mere 
 girl. It may be that all the deadly uses of that weapon 
 only gradually revealed themselves to her : still even to 
 day her creeping thoughts felt its edge. 
 
 Meanwhile, to-day, and during all the days of the 
 present week, in the other Cape-Cod house the artist-girl 
 toiled early and late at her picture of the Knight-Templar. 
 She was not minutely learned in the history of any of 
 those semi-military, semi-religious orders among the chiv 
 alry of the middle ages ; but the picture was no anachro 
 nism. The simple, brave, believing spirit it is the hero s 
 type in every age ; and this face of a man of the nineteenth 
 century, marked though it was with the problems of his 
 time, still looked out from those vanished trappings of 
 the Red-Cross Knight with the same eternal qualities of 
 character which make even mental modes like mere acci 
 dents of costume. The figure stood in the simplest pose ; 
 it portrayed no crisis of action ; all the potentialities of 
 action were in the traits of the face. The artist wrought 
 at this head as she had never wrought before. She hid 
 herself from her lover to perfect his image. It was some 
 thing that she had secretly set herself to do before she 
 would accept his love, as a proof that she was not all 
 unworthy. 
 
 "That he may know I do not love him like a fool 
 and blind ; that I have counted up the jewels of his soul 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 269 
 
 every one ! ". she murmured to herself, and " Oh to make 
 them shine in his face ! " she cried in her throbbing young 
 heart, as day by day the perfect face of Kenyon Leigh 
 grow on the canvas. 
 
 " As when a painter, poring on a face, 
 Divinely through all hindrance finds the man 
 Behind it; and so paints him that his face, 
 The shape and color of a mind and life, 
 Lives ever at its best and fullest " 
 
 Thus was it that the artist painted Kenyon Leigh s 
 perfect face. His features were not faultless according to 
 any classical standard. But sometimes a face rich in the 
 latter kind of perfection floated before her in its adoles 
 cent beauty, as she traced the strong lineaments of the 
 Knight-Templar : it was the pictured face she had burned 
 to ashes in the old fireplace. It came, however, but as a 
 faint passing memory, merely with its old suggestion of 
 contrast to the face before her : the latter, and the man 
 linked to it, absorbed all her being. 
 
 She had purloined a card-photograph of Mr. Leigh ; 
 then, too, as her picture advanced, she stole a kind of 
 sittings after the following manner ; that is, coming up 
 the front stairs from dinner with her invariable escort, she 
 would say to him, as she did one afternoon, " I am going 
 to unlock my studio by and by, and let Mrs. Doane come 
 hi a while when she has got her knitting well in hand.* 
 
 44 And myself too? " very eagerly from the escort. 
 
 " If >ou will promise to walk straight from the door to 
 the same corner I put you in the other day." 
 
 " And without even one look yet at the mysterious new 
 picture? " 
 
 ; Not a look. I have told you that you can be a little 
 useful to me in the matter of shoulders. Anybody can 
 sit as a study for shoulders. The men of the middle ages 
 
270 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 were large creatures, I suppose. I wish my warrior to 
 have the right proportions." 
 
 44 Show him to me, and I can point out all his faults at 
 once. There must be a great many of them, painting as 
 you do in this solitary exaltation and self -sufficiency. It 
 will make a failure of your warrior. He will not belong 
 to this world." 
 
 44 It is indeed a poor world for him," averred the 
 maiden. 
 
 4 Quite good enough," testily replied Mr. Leigh ho 
 was getting mortally jealous of that man of the middle 
 ages. " I wish to see him, that I may judge of his pre 
 tensions." 
 
 44 You mock at them in advance. You cannot see 
 him." 
 
 By this time the studio-door is reached, unlocked, and 
 the maid, watching her chance, slips swiftly through it, 
 holding the door narrowly open from within while she 
 peeps back at the suppliant in a fashion that has grown 
 tormentingly familiar to him. 
 
 44 1 shall soon know you, Miss Rivers, only by sections 
 of your face. The effect is extremely broken far from 
 good." 
 
 444 Quite good enough for the beholder. Half an 
 eye ought to wither any man who so persists in begging 
 invitations to the workshop of an extremely busy person. 
 If he were not of the severely occupied sex, and it were 
 proper manners, one might suggest that he take up some 
 useful industry himself, to keep him from loitering at 
 doors after he has received the broadest hints to go." 
 
 During these gibes the man is intent only on the sternly 
 narrowing door, through whose straitening space he hastens 
 to cry, 
 
 44 But you said I might come in and sit in the corner." 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 271 
 
 " Not till Mrs. Doane is ready. Wait till you hear her 
 coming up the stairs." 
 
 " Why need Mrs. Doane come at all?" is the daring 
 demand. 
 
 To keep you in order, keep you from giving those 
 sudden great jerks of your shoulders which you did very 
 troublesomely the last time." 
 
 U I was not practised then as a model. To-day T w^l 
 stir no more than the brazen Brahma on my mantel 
 piece." 
 
 " No, no: you cannot be trusted. You will be travel 
 ling out of your corner, without Mrs. Doane to fence you 
 in. Besides, I want to finish that group of you two which 
 
 I began the other day, or to sketch a new one an idea 
 seizes me at this moment." And with these words the 
 last crack in the door is closed, that inexorable bolt flies 
 to, and there is no hope of admittance till Mrs. Doane 
 comes up-stairs ; and the subjugated man walks meekly 
 into the studio in the matron s train. 
 
 But if an American lover must be punished for falling 
 in love with a young woman 4 seized of ideas by being 
 forced to do his wooing, after the fashions of Continental 
 Europe, with third persons in the room, there could not 
 have been a less offensive duenna than good Mrs. Doane. 
 She had strictly kept her word of honor never to steal a 
 look at the secret picture : still she had her surmises about 
 it, and that not the lines of Mr. Leigh s mere shoulders 
 were what Monny traced at these sittings, nor yet the 
 
 II groups ; " which were merely various ludicrous carica- 
 tuies of her two visitors, which she often executed at a 
 few strokes, behind her easel, to cover her real work 
 there. 
 
 Thus to-day, when the minister and the matron were 
 seated in their appointed corner, the artist set up inside 
 
272 A REVEREND [DOL. 
 
 her large canvas a bit of sketching- board with this an 
 nouncement : 
 
 u This afternoon, Mr. Leigh, I will make a small sketch 
 of you as a domineering Churchman persecuting my an 
 cestors in the days of the bad Stuarts. Mrs. Doane will 
 represent my people. She will be the faithful Puritan 
 matron, whose meeting-house you shut up, and call it by 
 Biich reviling names as conventicle ; whose cows and 
 things you take away to pay your unjust tithes ; whom 
 you impose on without end, till she is driven far over the 
 wide, cold ocean, to take refuge on Cape Cod." 
 
 " Or you might make a small sketch of me," suggests 
 Mr. Leigh, " as a faithful Churchman in the days of that 
 good Long Parliament. Driven out of my pulpit and my 
 little country parish for no crime but using the Prayer- 
 Book, hunted over the moors by the Roundheads, till 
 Mrs. Doane, the gentle Puritan matron, shelters me in 
 her house, lest an honest, if misguided, fellow- creature 
 perish of cold and hunger." 
 
 "I should certainly have taken you in, sir," said the 
 Orthodox widow, looking reverently up at the Episcopal 
 clerg} T man. 
 
 " II m, h m ! don t give up to him so, aunt Persy ! " 
 cried the younger champion. " Now, do you not acknowl 
 edge, Mr. Leigh, that your side behaved much, much 
 the worse? Were not the Puritans a great deal nearer 
 the right, on the whole? " 
 
 "It is, it mayhap," replied Mr. Leigh in the quietly 
 imposing recitative of a man quoting out of a book, " it 
 is not altogether to the discredit of the kindly race of - 
 young ladies, that they are apt to take an interest warm, 
 yea, partial, in the deeds and sentiments of their fore 
 fathers. But truly the calm historian cannot gratify such 
 predilections. He must needs declare, that, although 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 273 
 
 the Puritans were honorably tenacious of their opinions 
 under persecution, still their own tempers were sullen, 
 fierce, and rude, their opinions absurd and extravagant, 
 and their whole course of conduct that of persons whom 
 hellebore would better have suited than prosecutions unto 
 death for high treason.* 
 
 "You skip, you skip, calm historian!" challenges 
 Hlonny, popping out her bright face into full view at one 
 side of her easel, and dropping a brush in her gleeful 
 excitement at making a point against St. Ancient s rector. 
 "You are not cautelous in quoting your authorities. 
 The first, the very first paragraph in your extract reads 
 so : The prelatist, the perjured prelatixt, desires that his 
 predecessors should be considered moderate in their power, 
 and just iii their execution of its privileges ; when truly 
 the unimpassioned peruser of the annals of those times 
 shall deem them sanguinary, violent, and tyrannical. " 
 
 "Breathes there a young lady with soul so dead," 
 rejoined Mr. Leigh, endeavoring to save himself by as 
 suming his most imperturbable air, "so devoid of all the 
 pleasing enthusiasms of her sex, that she stops to read the 
 prefaces of novels, of the Heart of Mid Lothian, and 
 remembers every line on the cold page, like an attorney ? " 
 
 "To confound the special pleaders who do not quote 
 fair, who garble Sir Walter Scott to their own uses, 
 and he a Tory to begin with ! 
 
 "Well, well, too sharp young Mayflower! On the 
 whole, we will let his last words stand ungnrMed. I 
 believe the conclusion of that whole matter is in these 
 ^o-ds: Nathless, while such, and so preposterous, were 
 the opinions on either side, there were, it cannot be doubt 
 ed, men of virtue and worth on both to entitle either 
 paity to claim merit for its martyrs. " 
 
 "That is the best sentiment of all, that has the right 
 
274 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 sound/ said Mrs. Doane, picking up her ball of yarn, 
 and straying out to the hall- window to cosset her plants 
 there a little. Then the blessed woman strayed sol tly on 
 down stairs, leaving the American lover to snatch for a 
 moment his national privilege of being alone with the 
 adored one. He had to be very wary, however, about 
 changing his tone too markedly, lest this incalculable 
 maid would sound an alarm for the duenna. So, with 
 some continuation of the teasing tone in which the late 
 conversation had gone on, he said, taking up a book 
 from a stand near by, inscribed with the name " Monny 
 Kivers," 
 
 4 Why does a being with such a beautiful name as 
 Anemone, not write out her name properly as it is? " 
 
 "To enrage Lord Dufferin when he sees me in my 
 boarding-school catalogue. Only I never have spelled 
 * Monny with an l ie,* which, of course, will make the 
 governor-general of Canada feel badly. He is the last 
 man, I believe, who has spent all his scorn on the names 
 of American ladies. Is it not a most presumptuous piece 
 of British interference firing at us way over the bor 
 der? Girls," she went on, " are obliged to make mince 
 meat of their names, because they have such dreadful 
 names given them in their helpless infancy : so, when 
 they grow up, they have to trim them down as best they 
 can. The merriest and most unpretending girl I knew 
 at school was christened by such a name as Melpomene. 
 What could she do but write herself Mellie, or Fom- 
 inie ? " demanded the maiden, who, as for her own name 
 of Anemone, really thought it so romantically affected 
 a name, it had required all her sentiment for her dead 
 mother ever to reconcile her to it. 
 
 " But Anemone, the wind-flower to call that a dread 
 ful name!" exclaimed the lover, who, for his part, SID- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 275 
 
 cerely thought that no other name on earth could have 
 BO exquisitely suited this ever-varying maiden. 
 
 But the perverse wind-blossom replied, " How would 
 a man like to be named after all the flowers of the field, 
 without waiting to see what kind of a flower ne would 
 grow up into ? 
 
 u That grace has not been given him. He is not of 
 the sex that grows up into flowers." 
 
 41 Certainly. He could be named Chamomile," laughed 
 Monuy, " Juniper, Quince, Caly can thus, Pitch-Pine, 
 all these names in the language of flowers mean mascu 
 line attributes (what are supposed to be masculine) , 
 fortitu le, benevolence, time, and philosophy, 4 I will pro 
 tect thte. Those are the meanings." 
 
 44 Which of them means, 4 I will protect thee ?" quick 
 ly interposed the lover. 
 
 44 Juniper! As absurd a one as any," cried Monny. 
 44 The Reverend Juniper Leigh ! Wouldn t he be thankful 
 to write himself Junie, or Nip ? Nip would be the 
 most mannish, I suppose, and extremely dignified for a 
 minister." 
 
 A girl who is bent only on warding off all possibility 
 of serious talk, and a man who is reconciled to any talk 
 by the one blissful fact that the darling is there, and the 
 d n-nna is not, a pair so circumstanced will strikingly 
 illustrate what puerilities conversation can be reduced to 
 between two not wholly soft-brained mortals, and still go 
 on very interestingly to the twain. 
 
 Thus the next remark which the famous Kenyou Leigh 
 oTered was - to inquire most solicitously, 44 What does 
 Anemone mean in the language of flowers?" 
 
 44 What do men study in all their colleges, that they 
 come out of them so ignorant of the barest rudiments of 
 knowledge? In my school botany there was a catalogue, 
 
276 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 pages long, giving all the meanings of flowers in the 
 most alphabetical order." 
 
 " No such delightful text-books are studied in men s 
 colleges, nothing half so interesting. This language 
 of flowers is a quite unknown tongue to me. Tell me, 
 what does Anemone mean in it ? 
 
 4 Do you dislike Mouny very much?" asked the 
 maid, by way of answer ; for she would have been con 
 tent now to have been christened " Buttercup," or " Hol 
 lyhock," if those names had pleased Mr. Leigh s fancy. 
 
 "How could I dislike Monny ? " he replied, with 
 such an emphasis the artist s head instantly disappeared 
 behind her canvas, and she was severely absorbed in her 
 work again. 
 
 " Have you ever been called Ana, for a little name?" 
 ventured the man ; for, although the maiden s little name 
 of Monny was dear to him, he had a lover s fancy that 
 a little name all to himself would be still dearer. 
 
 Never, replied the busy artist. I have always 
 been called Monny, for short." 
 
 " See how rich your name is in adaptations ! Then the 
 anemone is certainly one of the most poetic of all flowers. 
 The old Greeks named it when they saw it swaying in the 
 soft Thessalian airs. It keeps its lovely name under 
 the waters, the sea-anemone, you know, most beautiful 
 of all the ocean forms, a plant just breaking into breath 
 ing life " 
 
 "Oh! what they call a polyp!" interrupted Monny 
 with a musical shriek. A thing all a horrid mouth , and 
 claws set round to feed it. I ve seen him in the a jua- 
 rium. Polyp Rivers ! The worst, worst name that was 
 ever done to me yet. O h!" This prolonged outcry 
 in which Monny s nonsense suddenly broke off was caused 
 by a glimpse of Mr. Leigh s tall head as he slyly rose 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 277 
 
 up to make a raid out of his corner. But the swift girl 
 was too quick for him. Snatching her canvas fiorn her 
 easel, and successfully keeping its painted side from 
 sight, she flashed, with her big but not very heavy 
 bunion, through a door behind her, which opened into 
 her bedroom, whither the pursuer could not follow 
 
 There was a ringing laugh of victory on one side the 
 closed door, and on the other a man to whom nothing 
 was left but to go back to his own rooms, and search 
 there for some book which would tell him what u anem 
 one " meant in the language of flowers. He actually found 
 such a work there, among the possessions of Mrs. Doane, 
 lover of flowers, a certain volume called "Flora s 
 Casket," which stood, with other faded little gilt-edged 
 volumes of the ornamental sort, on a small hanging piece 
 of furniture, made of pasteboard and varnished pine- 
 cones, which graced his study-walls. This work verily 
 expounded, with appropriate tags of poetical quotation, 
 u the lan^ua^e of flowers;" and with a little search in 
 
 O & 
 
 this new dictionary, "anemone" was found. "Anem 
 one " signified anticipation. Her lover certainly had not 
 much else to sustain himself on at present. 
 
 But whatever capers the evasive maiden practised all 
 this week, her friskiness sobered into the most absorbing 
 earnestness as soon as she was alone in her loeked-up 
 studio. She painted by the early morning light, and some 
 times far into the night, even ; mixing her colors before 
 dark, and finding something that she could do on her 
 canvas, even by the yellow light of kerosene lamps. 
 
 And, by Saturday night of this week, the picture of the 
 Knight-Templar stood completed, a great picture, who 
 ever had painted it, and which, as the work of an artist 
 (man or woman) but twenty-one years old, was a creation 
 which would be called miraculous. It is a miraculously 
 
278 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 rare thing, indeed, to happen to any woman s work, that 
 the supreme personal passion of her heart can absolutely 
 rush in one current with the creative effort of her mind. 
 This boon, with all its hidings of power, was Mommy s. 
 She knew that her lover prized her gifts as she prized his ; 
 and to show him those gifts at their best, and in a T\ ork 
 which should portray his very image as it stood glorified 
 in her young vision this was a work into which she 
 could verily throw her whole undivided self. Young aa 
 she was, she had attained already through years of that 
 long travail of effort wherewith these gifts have birth, 
 and through the priceless discipline of some true training 
 to a high degree of the artist s mere skill and knowl 
 edge ; and now, strong and sure as the Atlantic tides 
 sweeping up the shore, came the inspiration. 
 
 Oh ! wayworn and weary as most gifted women must 
 come to their achievement, though its purpose thrilled 
 their earliest opening life blessed indeed above women 
 was this maiden, toiling over her masterpiece far into the 
 night, since she was yet in those first young years when 
 the bright eyes could outwatch the stars, and the morrow 
 show only some sweet languor of their lids, some soft 
 paleness, making only tenderer the fab: cheek : hers was 
 the palma sine pulvere. 
 
A BEVEKEND IDOL. 279 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 rpHE next Sunday also was an eventful day to Monny ; 
 -L for she was to hear Mr. Leigh preach for the first 
 time. He was to be the " supply " that day in the little 
 Orthodox church of Lonewater. 
 
 Clara Macey had returned home during the week : so 
 Monny was released from her organ duties ; and at the 
 usual hour, arrayed in a white walking-costume, it was 
 one of those intensely hot days which often come back in 
 the first weeks of September, like a lavish good-by visit 
 of the parting summer, she set out for the village 
 church with Mrs. Doane. A carryall had been sent to the 
 house to convey the preacher of the day : but he left this 
 vehicle to the sole use of the ladies, who could thus carry 
 a third feminine passenger ; and as the vehicle went some 
 what out of its way to take up this neighbor, an infirm old 
 lady, the church, when the carryall finally arrived there, 
 was already crammed to overflowing with the people who 
 had come from miles around to bear the man preach who 
 could swim the Lonewater breakers in a midnight gale. 
 
 Now, seeing how crowded the church was, and that 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt was just coming towards it, quite 
 alone, Monny bade the sexton take only the old ladies 
 into those "best seats * which he had carefully reserved 
 for Mr. Leigh s, present household, while she waited for 
 the New- York stranger, in order to transfer to the latter 
 any advantage of her own about seats. 
 
 This little Impulse of courtesy was the only feeling 
 
280 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 stirred in Monny this morning at sight of the lady who 
 had so exercised her mind the Sunday before. She had 
 actually made her toilet to-day (she wore Mr. Leigh s gift 
 of the white-lawn gypsy) with the single aim of pleasing 
 one pair of masculine eyes, uncrossed by a thought of 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt, or of what claims the dowdy aristo 
 cratic style might have on her future adopting, looked at 
 in the stern light of duty. Actually, as she stood waiting 
 now in the church-door, she had completely forgotten 
 what her own looks were, or Mrs. Van Cortlandt s, seeing 
 nothing, with that far-off light in her young eyes, but the 
 minister whose public speech she was to hear to-day for 
 the first time in her life. Yes, with the ever-gathering 
 exaltation of feeling in which she had painted her lover s 
 picture during the past week, the expectant mood that 
 thrilled her now, it was as if she had gone away with him 
 into some world apart, just they two had entered in to 
 that place of separateness, and the door was shut. Shut 
 even to the related solicitudes that had moved her the 
 last Sunday before the lady parishioner of St. Ancient s ; 
 and, modestly saluting that lad} 7 now, the two passed into 
 the church together, attracting every eye. 
 
 Very rarely, in truth, into one little meeting-house, or 
 into the largest one, come a pair of such striking feminine 
 figures as were these two beautiful women. Each of them 
 singularly set off the other ; and both of them, in different 
 ways, looked immortal. The black-robed divinity looked 
 neither old nor young ; yet no man would ever have de 
 scribed her as of uncertain age, or, in that rather dubious 
 phrase of compliment, as a well-preserved woman. No : 
 dateless of days, her beauty shone in its pale, starry 
 splendor, seeming by its own nature changeless ; so perfect 
 it must have been created just as it was, subject neither to 
 growth nor to decay. The white-robed girl, on the other 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 281 
 
 hand, suggested such plenitude of life, it seemed as if 
 nothing could ever drain the bounteous tides which fed 
 those young pulses, so rounding every contour, making 
 the mere irmdation of tints, where her fair veined temples 
 melted into the rose of her cheek, and that again into the 
 whiteness of her round throat, like a symphony of light : 
 for the moment, one forgot to ask what of all this would 
 be left when the sallowing years should smite her ; for 
 the moment hers, too, seemed a beauty that could not De 
 touched of time. 
 
 The minister, as he sat in the pulpit waiting for the last 
 strokes of the bell to die away, turned a silent glance on 
 the pair who drew so many glances from the congregation 
 as they came up the aisle. Psychologists might say that 
 some occult warning, in this moment, touched the soul of 
 the lover, of danger to the maiden in the neighborhood 
 of that widow ; for he experienced some slight sensation 
 like relief in seeing them finally seated, not together, but 
 apart. But this passing feeling could probably be ac 
 counted for in a less fanciful way. Thus : the vivid 
 picture which the beautiful twain had made as they 
 moved together, led the eye almost automatically to com 
 pare them ; and there were subtle refinements of feeling 
 in Kenyon Leigh which shrank from any comparing of 
 those two women. He had no more sense of having 
 chosen one of them than of having left the other; for 
 he did not assume that Mrs. Van Cortlandt had ever been 
 his to leave, and his sentiment for Monny was too utterly 
 supreme for him to think of her as a choice. Save for 
 one intense moment of his life, he had never compared 
 her with anybody ; but that moment s comparison had 
 been made with this very woman : and that precisely she, 
 who so recently was on the opposite side of the globe, 
 should be walking now into this little church of the wilder- 
 
282 A KEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 ness, in such striking juxtaposition to Monny, was a 
 coincidence which impressed him for an instant in some 
 dimly unwelcome way. 
 
 It was all a very dim, feeling, however, so dim that 
 he may have recognized the pleasurable alternation that 
 he experienced on seeing Monny parted from that sug 
 gestive companion merely as pleasure at seeing the darling 
 of his heart, as he had always seen her, surrounded by 
 untutored people, so distinct among them, yet so beloved. 
 For Monny, giving her own reserved pew-seat, of course, 
 to Mrs. Van Cortlandt, refused all other places, to blot 
 herself, as the French say, in a little corner of one of the 
 crowded aisle-settees, beside her ancient mariner, Isry- 
 Chris, who proudly created this room for her. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt, as well as Mr. Leigh, was gratified 
 to have Mouny sit just where she did, because, in her side 
 ways position in the aisle, the girl was particularly well 
 placed for the widow to study her face at leisure. All 
 that impression of surpassing beauty that she makes at 
 first sight, mentally pronounced the latter, as she made 
 this survey, is in the extreme variableness of her face, 
 and the brilliancy of her eyes and complexion, set off by 
 her curls, and that ingenue toilet which she understands 
 so well. The very briefest iv ud of beauty : these mobile, 
 vivacious faces are always the soonest lined : nobody will 
 turn round to look at her ten years hence, thought the 
 woman, whose face of imperial beauty people had turned 
 round to look at during far more than one decade. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt fancied that those stoned heroines 
 whose long and late power over men she was so emulous 
 of, had something like her own imperishable type of face. 
 But probably gifts far rarer and more enduring than any 
 mere physical charm belonged to those sirens who so 
 miraculously triumphed over the years. There was, mi 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 283 
 
 doubtedly, far fresher beauty at Egypt s court than in 
 the face of Cleopatra, "wrinkled deep in time." The 
 quality that "age could not wither" was something 
 deeper than her skin. No : even the perverted lives of 
 Circean women would probably show another secret for 
 their vitality than that deathly wisdom which prescribes 
 as the best life-preserving recipe "a hard heart and a 
 good digestion " (to the sex supposed to depend most on 
 its digestion), and which warns women, as in the words 
 of Landor, that "expression in the feminine face," viz., 
 the outward sign of an inward sensibility, " is a beauty for 
 which women must pay dearly and pay soon." 
 
 To be sure, there is a sense in which all energy of spirit 
 makes its mark on the flesh, and that early. Thus, even 
 to-day, when the light and bloom which this artist-girl 
 seemed to radiate as she entered the church, a little died 
 from her face, a close observer would have noted in it 
 signs of thought and endeavor which contradicted all that 
 impression of extreme Juvenility, as of a girl scarcely 
 more than half through her teens, which her dimpled fair 
 ness gave at first sight. 
 
 Well, Monny might smile at all the threatenings of 
 time ; since, from the first, she had drawn her lover by 
 one of those attractions to which the charms of a face 
 are but the merest lending. But the far deadlier destroyer 
 than time, which the jealous woman who watched her 
 was setting this moment on her track what could the 
 unconscious victim do against that foe? Yes, the plotter- 
 watched the victim while the opening services now began, 
 led by an Orthodox minister who had come in among the 
 hearers, and been invited into the pulpit, while the con 
 gregation rose up and sat down in the Orthodox places : 
 all the wnile she studied that young creature in the aisle. 
 Every outward sign that might aid her in guessing the 
 
284 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 girl s most personal traits and temperament, the precise 
 shade of her social position in the city, all these things 
 it concerned the widow s wily purposes to know. She 
 noted that preposterous old fisherman beside her, evi 
 dently her acquaintance, from the grand delight with 
 which he waited on her. Isry-Chris, having a very tidy 
 old wife, got himself up for church with scrupulous neat 
 ness ; but it must be confessed that he was transformed 
 by his Sunday clothes, from the hoary picturesqueness 
 which he had in his week-day ones, into a striking re 
 semblance to the symbolic Uncle Sam in one of Nast s 
 caricatures. The marvellous hitch about his trousers, 
 the indescribable fling of coat-tails and cravat, was, 
 doubtless, partly due to the fact that the chief pieces 
 of his Sunday suit had usually belonged to some other 
 man before himself, and partly to that indefeasible jaunti- 
 ness which a sailor, of whatever years, will impart to his 
 attire. But Mrs. Van Cortlandt was precisely the sort of 
 fine lady to find the old man, in his grotesque simplicity, 
 an object to shudder at, and to make silent criticisms on 
 Monny, as she first distributed her own little hymn-book 
 to the unprovided ones near, and then looked over with 
 Isry-Chris in that hymn-book, big as a ledger, which he 
 had brought for his old eyes ; her white hand holding 
 one side of it, and his horny brown paw grasping the 
 other, while she stood up beside him in all unconscious 
 ness, singing, with something of the sweet voice of her 
 musical mother, in such melodies as the congregation 
 joined in. 
 
 Monny had always the good old Roman-Catholic virtue 
 of being able to say her prayers beside a beggar : but she 
 would really not have known to-day whether prince or 
 beggar were beside her ; all her soul had migrated into 
 the pulpit with the man who was presently to stand up 
 there in an office in which he was yet unknown to her. 
 
A KI;VI;I:I:ND IDOL. 285 
 
 Now, to confess all the truth, ever since Monny s first 
 dawn of sentiment for Mr. Leigh, she had a little dreaded 
 to hear him preach. At first this had been because the 
 thought of him as a minister a little disturbed his perfect 
 ideal as a lover: she was so far from the type of young 
 woman who finds a clergyman as such a romantic charac 
 ter. And when the power of this disturbance was past, 
 when the man became so supreme to her that his vocation 
 no longer mattered to herself, then a new and far deeper 
 solicitude touched her, as to how it might matter to him. 
 
 That power of sympathetic insight which distinguishes 
 all fine feminine natures, and which so often enables a 
 woman to outrun her knowledge in true appreciation of 
 whatever concerns the man she loves, this insight in 
 such a girl as Monny was like a divination. Thus dis 
 cerning, as she did, what a masculine grasp of realities 
 characterized Kenyon Leigh, she could not imagine him 
 as dogmatizing on the things that nobody knows ; and to 
 reiterate the things that everybody knows he was too 
 original for that. But again : least, least of ah 1 , could 
 she imagine him as standing up in a pulpit to turn over 
 k all the riddle of the painful earth " as a mere problem 
 to exercise and entertain the mind with, however bril 
 liantly. 
 
 Yet what could any preacher do, save some of these 
 things? was the query that haunted even this young 
 daughter of the Puritans, till Kenyon Leigh rose up, and 
 " his full Sowing river of speech came down upon the 
 heart." That it should overcome this young heart like 
 a current setting from some new immorta^ seas was not 
 very strange, of course. But there was no class of minds 
 on which this preacher did not make somewhat the same 
 impression. This, by the way, was a never-ending mar- 
 1*3! to some critics, who would have said that he would 
 
286 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 only be appreciated by the very cultured, superior few, 
 never by the many ; and all sorts of extraneous reasons 
 were sought, to account for his mysterious popularity 
 with the multitude. The secret probably needed no such 
 ingenious searching-out. It might not follow that all the 
 crude ears that were always found in good proportion in 
 that varied throng at St. Ancient s had been suddenly 
 opened to perceive the superior force and beauty of this 
 preacher s noble simplicity of speech, where the vividness 
 was all in the ideas, to perceive the superiority of this 
 style, as a mere style, over that of the orators whose 
 eloquence was rather in their sounding flights of words, 
 and the liveliness of their arms and legs. Quite possibly, 
 some of this class of eager listeners to Kenyon Leigh still 
 thought, that, as to orators, those other speakers were the 
 geniuses ; while this was only a plain, blunt man, who 
 spoke right on, in a fashion that mysteriously restored 
 some lost purpose and enthusiasm and assurance to life, 
 a re-assurance which a great many different kinds of 
 people were in want of ; and this was what brought the 
 crowd. 
 
 Seriously this might be so. The man did most singu 
 larly and peculiarly meet an especial and widely-diffused 
 despair of our time ; and whoever speaks to a general 
 want will draw the general humanity to hear him, what 
 ever his mere phrases be. The gift of Kenyon Leigh 
 was, that he laid hold of the spiritual forces of life as 
 other great leaders of thought to-day lay hold of its 
 physical forces. They were just as actual to him. It 
 was precisely that masculine grasp of realities brought 
 to bear on things which are slipping out of men s belief 
 as realities just this quality in him, which h id so 
 troubled young Monny as to how it would find its exer 
 cise in the pulpit which made his peculiar might there 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 287 
 
 Ho was like an incarnate deliverer from tbe spirit of 
 fatalism, tbe very St. Michael to that dragon whose 
 constricting folds so tend to press the life to-day from out 
 the moral will, in the rudest as in the most refined breast. 
 Luther throwing his inkstand at the Devil could as easily 
 have been persuaded that evil and good tire twin -brethren, 
 arid both irresponsible puppets worked by the wires of 
 circumstance, as Kcnyon Leigh, albeit he did not IIVG in 
 an age to make precisely that kind of projectile of lu.s 
 iijkstand. Of course, behind the unique mental organiza 
 tion that was at once so broad and so positive, there was 
 the great illuminating light of a personal character which 
 had its own way of shining. 
 
 " He don t do the scare, nor a bit of the soft sawder ; 
 he s got no delivery and no doctrines (nothing newei 
 than the old Bible ones, that is) ; ain t so very deadly 
 handsome ; grand kind of a figure but no more science 
 of showing it off than a sheep. No, boys : I tell you 
 what positively makes the rush after that new rector at 
 St. Ancient s is, that he s a man himself of a kind of 
 forty-thousand power to keep the strait road in a crooked 
 wale ; and by the Lord ! if, in about five minutes of him, 
 you don t begin to wish you was making more tracks that 
 way yourself! Yes, sir: when I set out from the fair 
 city of Destruction, there s a man I shall tie up to for the 
 journey. " 
 
 Thus the Rev. Kenyon Leigh was described, when he 
 first made his advent in New York, by one of those youth 
 ful professors of gospel criticism who report the sermons 
 for the Monday-morning dailies, as he sharpened his pen 
 cil in it nd-v zvous with his confreres. And it may be that 
 the more elegant critics who had puzzled over the riddle 
 of Kenyon Leigh s popularity did not so nearly solve it. 
 
 Well, it is not necessary to make any extracts from 
 
288 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 the sermon, or even to mention the text that was preached 
 from this morning in the little seaside church, crowded 
 with sailors, down to the lowest deck-hands from vessels 
 lying in Sunday harbor at the next port, whose crews had 
 walked over to Lonewater, getting news that the hero of 
 the shipwreck was to preach there. Kenyon Leigh never 
 preached down to any audience, and he did not preach 
 down to this one ; but perhaps that strangely sensitive 
 young hearer whom he had in his congregation to-day 
 could have nowhere heard him where his commission 
 would have been made so clear to her. 
 
 Certainly there were men in the world who considered 
 Kenyon Leigh as a great wasted power, as a man lavish 
 ing in an outworn profession a genius which in any other 
 field than the pulpit would have made him a deathless 
 name. But to-day, the girl, who, only a girl, was such 
 a critic as in all his audiences the famed preacher had 
 never had before, for none could so measure his greatness 
 as did she, this young hearer, listening through the 
 deepening hush which always fell on Kenyon Leigh s 
 audiences, and which held as if spell-bound this motley 
 throng, was assured, with eternal assurance at last, that 
 the man was in his true work, and that he did it with the 
 rejoicing strength in which the true work is done. But 
 then, he had got his new start. 
 
 And the woman who for years had heard this preacher, 
 and yet could sit there to-day weaving her treacherous 
 designs ? Yea ; and the most famous traitor in all history 
 had sat under the preaching of the Master, plotting his 
 treason while the divine sermon fell. 
 
 Oh, solemn exordium which must limit all exhortatk n 
 that ever was or shall be ! "He that hath ears to hear, 
 let him hear." 
 
A. BEVEliEND IDOL. 289 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 MONNY went directly out when the congregation was 
 dismissed : her seat in the aisle enabling her to slip 
 quietly away from exchanging any of those greetings with 
 the villagers which were usually a pleasure to her. But 
 to-day her young heart swelled with emotions which made 
 her long to escape from every-day speech. In the entry, 
 however, she was met by the widow Mace} T , Clara s moth 
 er, who had hastened to speak to the young lady, that she 
 might invite her to go to dinner at her little cottage, not 
 far from the church. 
 
 Mormy knew that Mr. Leigh was to preach at the next 
 town in the afternoon ; that there would be an early 
 dinner at home, after which he would immediately set off : 
 BO, on the whole, she went along with the pleased widow 
 Macey. The widow s musical daughter, Clara (not at all 
 a genius, but with talent and industry above the average), 
 was now to go to the city for the winter, to continue her 
 musical studies there, through Monny s influence ; the 
 latter having found a family where the girl could have 
 board in return for giving piano-lessons to two children : 
 BO Miss Macey had only returned home for a brief period, 
 to get her wardrobe in order. 
 
 Monny, who was not more generous than she was con 
 siderate of the feelings of sensitive poverty, was quite 
 adored at widow Macey s cottage ; and after dinner the 
 two young girls went out again together, Clara to go 
 back to the church to play for the afternoon Sunday 
 
290 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 school, while Monny turned aside to call at Skipper Ben- 
 way s little house. There she staid to fan the sufferer, 
 who lay breathing his life slowly away, or take the restless 
 small children of the family out of doors, under the low 
 apple-trees, and softly tell them stories there, to the res 
 pite of their overtasked mother. 
 
 Then, when the sun began to decline somewhat, she 
 walked dreamfully home, hearing, as she had heard all 
 tli3 afternoon, that preacher of the morning, home to 
 the old house, so still in the sabbath stillness, and up to 
 her studio, to shut herself in there alone, and kneel long 
 before her picture of the Knight-Templar, which she had 
 called completed the night before, but which now it 
 seemed to her that she must paint all over again. The 
 warm, wide shining of the sea, the mighty sweep of the 
 Cape-Cod skies beneath which she had walked home, 
 she longed to bring those breadths into her little room 
 to paint that picture by ; such largeness, it seemed to 
 her, should be in the life that looked from it. Well, 
 the sun went down in the great horizon without, and the 
 little room grew too dark to see the picture in, and tea 
 was over, before the minister came, who also had had calls 
 to make, and did not arrive home until quite in the even 
 ing. 
 
 The low sea-breeze, that was stirring after the hot day, 
 grew soft with a rich waft of perfume as he opened Mrs. 
 Doane s little gate ; for all over the porch, and high up 
 on the walls of the old house, the sweet Madeira-vine wail 
 beginning to blow, whose long- waiting blossoms come 
 with all the white tenderness of spring, all the depth of 
 the ripened summer s fragrance the man in whose heart 
 love had bloomed even so, came swiftly up the walk and 
 over the threshold, thrilled with but one thought. Flash 
 ing in his impetuous search from room to room, he caught 
 
A REVEKEND IDOL. 291 
 
 at last the gleam of a white dress flitting up the stairs, in 
 time to call softly to it, through the darkness, "Good 
 night, Ana." 
 
 So faint and shy that only a lover s ear could have 
 heard it, was the returning "Good-night" that was 
 dropped over the balusters : still its accent told that the 
 lover s name was not forbidden. 
 
 Next day, Monuy got out her palette anew, and mixed 
 colors with great care, and thought she must surely re 
 touch the face of the Knight-Templar. But she did 
 nothing, and finally concluded that she could do nothing 
 until chance should procure her another sitting from her 
 subject. 
 
 Well, the subject walked into the studio, all uninvited, 
 soon after dinner ; Monny, who had remained in a very 
 subdued state since yesterday s sermon, having forgotten 
 all her tantalizing tricks to-day of holding parley at the 
 door, and then suddenly locking it in the suitor s face. 
 In fact, slipping away from that teasing promenade which 
 she had been wont to make with her lover from the dinner- 
 table to the doors of her rooms up-stairs, she had actually 
 passed from the entry into her studio, forgetting to lock 
 the door behind her. The warped old door did not remain 
 closed very securely, unless the bolt were slipped ; and, 
 finding it thus a little ajar, the visitor, with the merest 
 ceremony of a knock, marched in upon the artist. 
 
 "Where is Mrs. Doane?" the latter summoned voice 
 to ask. 
 
 " She has gone away. I saw her starting for the 
 village," replied the man, endeavoring to hide the intense 
 triumph with which he made this announcement in the 
 tone of one stating an entirely indifferent fact. Then he 
 planted himself in the corner where he usually posed foi 
 
292 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 his "shoulders," and assumed the immobility of a first- 
 class professional model. 
 
 The artist now certainly had her opportunity, but she 
 experienced a singular difficulty in improving it : she 
 could not take a steady look into the face of the sitter. 
 No : great artists among men have painted the women of 
 their love, openly studying their faces, drawing the lines 
 the truer, doubtless, for the inspiration of the beloved 
 presence ; but probably no woman could ever so paint her 
 lover s picture, save as she adopted some such strategy 
 as Monny s, who had followed a wise instinct in keeping a 
 third person in the room, thus enabling her to maintain all 
 her talk with Mr. Leigh in a vein of freakish nonsense, 
 while she watched his lineaments unaware. 
 
 To-day she could not take up that old tone again ; and, 
 after fussing a little with her palette and brushes, she 
 said, to break the too conscious silence which began to 
 fall, 
 
 u This is a hero of the middle ages, you know." 
 
 " Yes : up to date, that is all I have been able to learn 
 about him," replied Mr. Leigh, to whom that absoroing 
 hero had come to have such an actually objective exist 
 ence as a rival to himself, he was divided between a con 
 stant longing to punch his canvas head and a sentiment 
 of regard for Monny s work : so he only added the weakly 
 carping fling, " Saracen, Jew, or Crusader, which ruffian 
 of the period is he? " 
 
 " Oh, he is no ruffian ! He is the very ideal knight, 
 a Knight-Templar, one of the undegenerate days, I mean, 
 before they grew bad and ambitious," said Monny, re 
 membering Ivanhoe. " I suppose, of course, the first 
 Templars, those who embodied the pure idea, were great 
 heroes and true men. I had no books here to study up 
 their history : what were the conditions, the vows, of the 
 original order? " 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 293 
 
 "Will," mechanically began Mr. Leigh, "the first 
 Templars were required to be of noble birth, cell 
 bates" 
 
 "Oh!" interrupted the dismayed girl, as this before 
 unknown bit of historical information was let fall, "oh! 
 they were celibates ! O h ! 
 
 Among all the intonations of which that small word is 
 rapable, one of the most pining was Monny s naive, 
 dolorous note, as she discovered that she had painted the 
 man, beloved and adored, as a hopeless anchorite. Her 
 arms dropped helplessly by her side as she stood looking 
 blankly from the pictured face on her canvas to the 
 living face of the man who was so identified with it. The 
 latter did not know what was the matter, only that all 
 those maiden defences with which his capricious idol had 
 so bristled of late were down for a moment ; and, lest 
 another such moment should not come again in all the 
 rolling suns, he rose up swiftly, and crossed the room to 
 her side. 
 
 The girl, taken by surprise, could only make a startled 
 movement towards her picture ; but she was too late to 
 do any thing but hold her palette across the face of the 
 knight, as a last concealment. 
 
 "It looks a little bit like you," she pleaded 
 faintly, still striving to hide the telltale features on the 
 canvas. 
 
 Mr. Leigh put his hand on the little hand that grasped 
 f .he palette : he had never given his word of honor not to 
 look at that mysterious picture, always meaning to seize 
 the first expedient moment to look at it ; and now he put 
 his powerful hand on the maiden s, and gently drew the 
 little oval board from her hand. But it fell (he knew 
 not where, as he saw the face it had covered) as he 
 turned to tl e face of the girl who had painted it. 
 
294 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 44 O my darling, will you be my wife? " 
 " O Mr. Leigh, can I ever be good enough? " 
 So beautiful, so sacred, she stood there, with her 
 dropped eyelids, and her fair flushing cheeks, he dared 
 not kiss her only to put an arm around her, and dra\r 
 her to the high stool where she had been sitting lefore 
 her easel. Taking a lower seat himself beside her, he 
 turned thus to survey again the picture which he had seen 
 as yet in bijt one swimming glance. 
 
 He took it in now, with its marvellous revelations of 
 power, with all its infinitely tender suggestions of the love 
 that had wrought such very indifferent material as he 
 considered his own personal lineaments to be into this 
 wondrous picture he turned to the young creature who 
 had clone all this, and tried to speak, but could find no 
 utterance, save to take up Monny s own little words, and 
 say them for himself with his deep voice hushed and 
 broken, 
 
 Can / ever be good enough ? The sweet face that 
 was so near to his turned on him for answer such a look 
 of adoring trust, he drew it softly nearer, 
 
 41 My darling, my darling!" In the rapture of first 
 kisses no other speech could be. 
 
A BEVEBKND IDOL. 295 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 " A KE you busy to-night, aunt Persy, or very tired ? " 
 
 -L^- asked Mouny, looking into the familiar sitting- 
 room soon after the evening lamp was lighted there. It 
 was Tuesday evening ; and Mr. Leigh had left the Cape 
 in the morning, to fulfil some engagements which would 
 compel his absence for two or three days. 
 
 44 No, thank you, Miss Monny," replied the widow; 
 "only some extra steps to-day, that s all, what with 
 getting Susannah packed off this morning, and teaching 
 Jenny Hiues how to wait on the table, and do such things 
 round the house as a young thing like that is equal to." 
 
 44 And you have not heard any worse news from your 
 daughter Emily about the children?" Monny continued 
 interrogatively. 
 
 u No, dear. I m hoping the children won t be really 
 dangerous. Only a mother, with little ones ailing at all, 
 needs a help in the house that she s used to : so I thought 
 I must send Susannah to Em ly in this strait, and try to 
 get along myself with Jenny, since neither of my boarders 
 is of the fussy, exacting kind. Is there any thing you 
 want me to do for you, Miss Monny? " the matron sud 
 denly broke off, perceiving something peculiar in the 
 girl s face and her lingering manner. 
 
 44 No, no; but something I want to tell you," said 
 Mouny in a very troubled voice. 44 Something that s 
 been on my mind all day ; and it keeps growing bigger 
 and bigger, something dreadfid ! she gasped. 
 
296 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Now, the widow had already been told of Monny s 
 engagement to Mr. Leigh the day before ; an announce 
 ment that she had naturally been expecting for some 
 time. . So this intimation of desperate woes just now 
 sounded rather strange to her ; but, seeing the girl s evi 
 dent distress, she said at once, 
 
 4 Come, sit right down here in the rocking-chair, my 
 dear, and tell me what is the matter." 
 
 " Oh, the matter is that I have been engaged before! 19 
 cried Monny with a wailing burst of confession, as she 
 dropped into the chair. 
 
 There was a little pause of surprise before the widow 
 said, u Have you? Well, now, I had always supposed 
 that you didn t really care for any of em. It seemed to 
 me that there was none of all your beaux that you took a 
 truly serious fancy to." 
 
 " No more there wasn t," declared Monny vehemently. 
 " But there was one that I had a kind of fancy for when 
 I was sixteen ; but not serious. Oh ! it never could have 
 been serious, or it would not all have gone out of my life 
 so, like a dream, like something that never was. But, 
 while the dream lasted, I was engaged to him ; and so it 
 has come over me to-day that perhaps I ought to tell Mr. 
 Leigh. And how can I tell him?" cried the girl in an 
 anguish of reluctance. 
 
 " Certain, dear, Mr. Leigh is not the man to be hard 
 with you about such a thing, only a passing fancy, as 
 you say." 
 
 "But it will seem as if I have had something such a 
 sentiment for another man as I have now for Mr. Leigh ; 
 and I never, never have. It will be as if I said to Mr. 
 Leigh, I cared for that other man once ; and now I care 
 for you a little more. Oh, how cheap it will sound!* 
 lamented the girl, her spirit breathing the cry of love s 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 297 
 
 own passionate exclusiveness : li Set me as a seal upon 
 thy heart, as a seal upon thine arm ; for love is strong ,13 
 death." 
 
 "And there s something else all mixed up with it," 
 Monny broke out afresh; "things that will look most 
 wild and improper ; the strangest journey that I took once 
 to New Orleans, I shall have to tell Mr. Leigh all al>out 
 that too, if I tell him any thing. It s been going over 
 and over in my head all day. You see, I have not had 
 time before to-day really to think of these things. Of 
 course, until Mr. Leigh asked me in plain words to marry 
 him, it wasn t for me to be offering him information about 
 my old beaux. And then I have been all swallowed up 
 m the picture to make it truly like him. I felt born 
 into the world for just only that, to paint his perfect 
 likeness : I could .not remember any thing else. But 
 now the picture is done ; and I promised Mr. Leigh, when 
 he went away this morning, that I would not work at all 
 in my studio, but rest all the time till he came back. So 
 I have had nothing to do all day but think," said Monny, 
 who, like many another woman, had got more morbid 
 and unstrung by a few hours solitary brooding over a 
 personal matter than by weeks of intense application to 
 a piece of work requiring all her powers, albeit the 
 anxious lover was right in thinking that the marvellous 
 work she had wrought in those weeks had been at a strain 
 which required rest. 
 
 The other guardian of this excitable girl here rejoined, 
 with her view of things, "Yes, my dear: you ve been 
 swallowed up in doing the picture. And a wonderful 
 thing you ve made of it, more like Mr. Leigh than he 
 is himself. And how you make him look more natural 
 and alive, painted in all that queer old armor that he 
 never wore, than in his own actual coat and hat, which 
 
293 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 he does wear, Heaven that made you with such gifts may 
 know. But all I know is, that you do it by a swallowing 
 up, which needs must be at some wearing cost to the 
 nerves. And yet, instead of calming clown after that 
 excitement, and resting, as Mr. Leigh wished, you go 
 swallowing yourself up again in something that worries 
 you about an old beau, till it grows bigger and bigger, 
 as you say yourself, no doubt out of all its just and 
 natural size.* 
 
 4 l O aunt Persy ! it is not a trouble I have imagined up. 
 I only wish it was. You would be astonished yourself 
 at my ever having done such things. You see, even aunt 
 Helen does not know. She knows all about my being 
 engaged that time, of course, but not what was mixed up 
 with it, not about my going to New Orleans. Mrs. 
 Bingham advised me not to tell that to aunt Helen, nor 
 uncle John, nor anybody." 
 
 4 Mrs. Bingham? Who was she to give such advice 
 as that? " asked the widow, astonished. 
 
 "She was a New- York lady, who knew all about the 
 affair from beginning to end. And when she said to me, 
 k 1 would not tell your friends about this/ I did not. 
 But I did not promise her not to tell (she never asked 
 that) ; and now I wish to tell you, aunt Persy. Oh ! I 
 long to see how it will look to somebody else." 
 
 "And I wish to hear," said Mrs. Doane, thinking it 
 high time that New- York ladies who instructed girls to 
 keep secrets from their guardians should be disregarded. 
 -Tell me all of it." 
 
 I will, I will ! " eagerly replied Monny. " It was a 
 Southerner I was engaged to ; that is, he was born in 
 Baltimore, but he had lived mostly in Europe. His name 
 was Carroll De Lancey." 
 
 4 * It was in Europe, then, that you becara* engaged?" 
 
A KEVEflEND IDOL. 299 
 
 4 Oh, no! It was before I went to Europe. It was 
 all over then. It happened when I was at boarding- 
 school in New York ; and it all began by my having his 
 sister for a chum." 
 
 " She was one of your schoolmates, you mean? " 
 "No, not exactly. She was never under rules, like a 
 pupil. She was just a young lady boarder in our school. 
 She Lad finished all her schooling in France, in a very 
 aristocratic convent school, where some of the pupils 
 were even royal princesses. She was very proud of her 
 own lineage, which could be traced back to a De Lancey 
 who was a Norman knight and crusader ; but she was 
 born an American. Her father was a rebel officer, killed 
 in the war ; and after his death her mother had lived 
 abroad with her two children, till she died. And now 
 Miss De Lancey had come back ; and her friends had put 
 her in my school, merely as a convenient place for her to 
 stay in a few months, till her twin-brother Carroll, who 
 was a cadet in West Point, should be twenty-one (be 
 cause they had property affairs which could not be settled 
 up till he came to that age) , and then she was going back 
 to Europe again, for she hated America dreadfully. 
 That was all I knew about her at first ; for she never 
 spoke to any of the girls, but sat looking round her so 
 sulky and splendid, just like a princess whose crown had 
 been stolen, nobody could help watching her. And one 
 day I saw her in such an attitude, I went up and asked 
 her if I might make a sketch of her, she was so beauti 
 ful. And she turned, she couldn t stir without making 
 a new picture of herself, she turned into such another 
 attitude as would have scared me to death if it hadu t 
 been perfectly glorious too, just like Judith cutting off 
 the head of Ilolofernos. She looked at me that way a 
 minute, without speaking, and then she rose up, with a 
 
300 A EEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 kind of slow sign to me to lead the way ; and I took her 
 to my room, which was full of my drawings, for I was 
 studying art very hard then with my master. And she 
 went from one picture to another, making a kind of stage 
 stops and starts, but not saying a word, till suddenly she 
 turned round and broke out, like any girl, O you divine 
 little genius ! She was very extravagant in her speech, 
 you see ; and then she was truly fond of pictures, having 
 lived so long in Italy. And she sat right down, and 
 struck up a great friendship for me on the spot, and de 
 cided that she would be my chum. And I grew very 
 fond of her indeed. I liked all the girls, but I had never 
 had any truly dear intimate among them till Kate De 
 Lancey came." 
 
 4 Well, now, I shouldn t have supposed she was one 
 to be very fond of," remarked aunt Persy, to whom 
 Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes, although doubt 
 less a useful agent for exterminating the enemies of the 
 Lord, did not suggest the most endearing style of woman 
 for the intimacy of private life. 
 
 44 Oh. yes, she was ! " replied Monny, in behalf of her 
 Baltimore Judith. "Those fiercely scornful ways she 
 had were a little bit put on, you see, not vulgarly : it 
 was a behavior not at all like what artificial airs usually 
 are. She was truly high bred, the most elegant and per 
 fect young lady, whenever she chose to be. But she did 
 a little like to astonish people. And then she looked 
 down on every thing in America ; and yet being too really 
 warm in her feelingp, and like a girl, to be proud in the 
 icy style, she took on that tragedy-queen style. Then 
 she was in such a fury against the North ! When we 
 were chums, she used to just rave round our room when 
 she was in trouble, apostrophizing her father s ghost, and 
 crying that Massachusetts had murdered him." 
 
A REVEREND IDOL 301 
 
 Well, I should say that was scarce the behavior of 
 a young lady," observed Mrs. Doane, " when you were a 
 Massachusetts girl." 
 
 Oh! somehow you couldn t get much provoked with 
 her," replied Monny. " You see, having lived in Europe 
 ever since she was a little girl, she was so really ignorant 
 of America, and about the North especially she made 
 such monstrous mistakes, you couldn t take it quite seri 
 ously enough to get angry. No : mostly when she stormed 
 so, I used to sit perfectly fascinated to see her attitudes. 
 .She had the most wonderfully graceful figure, taller than 
 mine, and slim, slim and straight as an arrow, yet per 
 fectly willowy and bending : why, yon would have said 
 that I looked heavy beside her," declared Monny, with 
 such an accent as might have designated Barnum s fat 
 woman. 
 
 " To be sure," added the girl, " when she would go on 
 very bitterly about the wickedness of the war, I would 
 say, I m glad the slaves are free ! I put that in every 
 time, I m glad the slaves are free ! And she would 
 say, Of course you are, crazy little abolitionist, stark 
 mad under your curls, just like all the rest. Aboriginal 
 Puritan you are : don t I know it? Haven t I seen your 
 very ancestress ? Rose Carver Meat- axe Standish 
 whatever her name was. Hope I scorn to know their 
 names ! hope I scorn to know American history ! That 
 girl, I mean, standing up in their old boat, in the psalm- 
 singing picture "Landing of the Pilgrims," the one 
 pretty woman they had in their horrid crowd to save 
 them ; and so they always put her to the fore, in a way 
 to show her off, in their Landing of the Pilgrims. 
 Wouldn t I have landed them at the bottom of the sea 1 
 only I would have fished the poor Rose out by the golden 
 locks, to be your ancestress, you dear. 
 
302 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 " Rose Staudish was not really my ancestress at all,** 
 said Monny ; " but that was the way Kate would run on, 
 mixing every thing up, till she was all out of breath, and 
 often taking a sudden turn to hug me, after her worst 
 abusing of the North. You see, although she never left 
 off abusing Massachusetts, we were truly fond of each 
 other. She was an orphan, just as I was ; and then she 
 Lad other severe troubles which I had never had, such 
 as money troubles. For all the great wealth she had 
 been born to had been so swept away since the war, that, 
 when I knew "Kate, the property left to her and her 
 brother in their own right was but a mere little remnant. 
 But they had a distant relation, very rich, in Louisiana, 
 Gen. Warwick, a kind of great-uncle on their mother s 
 side, who had an idea of making them his heirs, for his 
 sons had been killed in the war, and he had no near heirs 
 alive. "Well, Kate was always in a worry lest this old 
 man, who was in very broken health (he had been a 
 great fighter in the war), would die without making a 
 will, in which case his money would all go to a certain 
 Louisiana family named Regdon, whom he perfectly 
 hated ; for he called these Regclons traitors to their 
 country, because, just before the war, seeing it coming 
 on, they had sold out their Southern property to advan 
 tage, and gone to live in Europe, and so had nothing to 
 do with the war ; and all their behavior in this he con 
 sidered most basely cunning and unpatriotic. Well, these 
 Regdons, who were rich already, and whom Gen. War 
 wick wouldn t leave his money to for any thing, would 
 yet be able to take it all in law, if he should die without 
 a will, because they were one degree nearer of kin to 
 him than the De Lancey orphans. And yet Gen. War 
 wick, being full of wild whims, Kate said, kept delaying 
 to make his will. It seemed his views were what even 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 303 
 
 Southerners would call wild. lie expected the w-ir couM 
 some time be foti" ut over again, and the Southern Con 
 federacy be restored ; and he wanted to leave his property 
 in some way to help on that end. He wanted Kate s 
 brother, I know, as the condition of being made his heir, 
 to promise certain things that he was not willing to prom 
 ise, because he had no idea of carrying them out. And 
 so, being dissatisfied with Carroll De Lancey, he would 
 often get into his head a plan of leaving his wealth to the 
 State in some way (his own State of Louisiana), so as 
 to forward future revolutionary schemes. I never clearly 
 understood it all," said Monny ; " only that Kate s great 
 anxiety always was this Gen. Warwick, and that he 
 would make some kind of strange will, which would be 
 set aside in a court of law, and so she and her brother 
 get nothing at all. And Kate had told me of all these 
 affairs before ever I saw her brother Carroll. I saw him 
 for the first time at a cadets ball at West Point. Kato 
 and I went there chaperoned by Mrs. Bingham. Mrs. 
 Bingham lived in New York, and hers was the only 
 Northern family that Kate ever visited at all. She was 
 the wife of Gen. Bingham, who had been bred to the 
 regular army, before the war, you know ; and he had 
 been minister to France, and in many other high posi 
 tions, as he was a great public man. 
 
 Well, way back in his boyhood, when he was being 
 educated at West Point, Kate De Lancey s father was a 
 cadet there too ; and the two were intimate friends. So 
 when the war came, and they fought on opposite sides, 
 and Kate s father was killed, Gen. Bingham mourned for 
 bis early friend, though he was a rebel, and ever after did 
 any thing he could for his widow and orphans, though he 
 was not their legal guardian. His legal guardians, I knew 
 afterwards, could do nothing at all with Carroll ; and Gen. 
 
804 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Bingham had found him living a very wild life in Paris, 
 when he was scarcely more than a boy, and had persuaded 
 him to come home, and enter West Point, thinking, I 
 suppose, that he would steady down there, and come out a 
 fine man at last. Well, Mrs. Bingham s carriage used to 
 be always coming to our school to take Kate to her house ; 
 an 1 two or three times Kate had got holidays for me to 
 go with her to Mrs. Bingham s, before we went under her 
 care to West Point. Gen. Bingham was one of the offi 
 cial visitors to West Point, though he did not go with us 
 to the ball. He was out of the country just then, and I 
 never knew him at all ; but his wife was a great lady, and 
 I admired her very much." 
 
 " I suppose it wasn t a regular thing for you to be 
 going to balls when you were away at school, was it?* 
 asked Mrs. Doane. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said Monny. " I never had been at a regu 
 lar grown-up ball in my life bafore. But a West-Point 
 ball is not just like other balls ; and Kate said her brother 
 wanted her to come so much, she would go, if I would 
 like it. You see, Kate herself did not care for going 
 about in America ; for, besides other reasons, she was 
 engaged to a nobleman in Italy, though her friends did 
 not greatly favor the match, which was another of her 
 troubles. 
 
 "Well, I was wild for dancing in those days: it was 
 the one amusement that I was truly fond of. And I had 
 a new dress made, and I thought it would be splendid 
 to go. 
 
 "And it was splendid," murmured Monny after a 
 dreamy pause. " I can look back and remember, jt:st 
 remember, you know, as you think of something that 
 once was, but which moves you no more, no more : in 
 that way, aunt Persy, I can think how the night of that 
 
A KEVEIIEND IDOL. 305 
 
 ball was all a wonderful joy to mo. It was ray very first 
 ball, and every thing was so beautiful and strange with 
 newness ; and he, Carroll De Lancey, was most beautiful 
 and strange of all. The first sight of him was the greatest 
 surprise to me when he came to meet us at the boat. I 
 might have known, of course, as he was Kate s twin- 
 brother, that he must be in his twenty-first year. Bui 
 she, being a girl, had come of age, you know, when she 
 was eighteen ; and, besides being legally free from her 
 guardians three } T ears sooner than her brother was, she 
 had such a way of taking all the responsibility about 
 their joint affairs, I had a notion, somehow, of her brother 
 as still a boy, much younger than she ; and there he was 
 a man, and like a young prince. He seemed older than 
 she, instead of younger, not having her fitful, impulsive 
 ways. He had her splendid beauty ; and he was proud like 
 her, but in a more careless, unconscious style. He was 
 like her in every thing, and yet not like her at all : I 
 mean there was all the difference there is between a young 
 man and a girl. 
 
 " Well, he danced with me at the opening of the ball : 
 then I had a few other partners, because their names were 
 already down on my card ; but after that he asked me to 
 dance with only him. He was one of the managers of 
 the ball : so, of course, he ought to have danced with all 
 the belles, to have taken out all the important young 
 ladies, in turn ; but he was like his sister in his way of 
 doing just as he chose, and he said he wished to dance 
 with nobody but me. And as I was only a school-girl out 
 for a holiday, and not a young lady in society yet, I did 
 not mind myself about the proper etiquette of balls ; and 
 so, after the first few sets, I danced with only him. He 
 was a perfectly splendid dancer ; and we were trained very 
 carefully hi dancing at Madime Melville s, so I could 
 
306 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 dance all night and never be tired : and they played all 
 the sweet Strauss waltzes, and it was as if we went 
 through the air. And it seemed to me as if all life was 
 going to be like that," said the girl, with a look on her 
 face as if she gazed back into some incredible past, 
 "only that, to whirl away in the Strauss waltzea, with 
 little sittings-down between waiting for the music to strike 
 i p again, while your partner put on your wraps so deli 
 cately you could not stop to think whether it was more 
 affectionate behavior than should be on so short an ac 
 quaintance. I suppose he did did begin to make love 
 to me that very night," confessed Monny, blushing at the 
 confession ; " and the next day he went everywhere I did, 
 although, of course, there wen others in the company. 
 And we went on the river next ev* .Jg in the moonlight ; 
 and he sang most wonderfully an old love-song, sang it 
 all to me, though we were not alone. And, when I went 
 back to school, he came right on to New York, and staid 
 at a hotel, and came to see me at Mrs. Bingham s ; and it 
 was very soon indeed that we were engaged. You see, 
 you see, aunt Persy," pleaded the girl, "Carroll De 
 Lanccy was not at all like a Massachusetts young gentle 
 man. I mean, inexperienced as I was then in lovers, I 
 am sure I would never have allowed any other kind of 
 young man to go on so fast : I should have thought him 
 bold, and myself a forward girl to allow it. But it seemed 
 just as proper for Carroll De Lancey to make love at first 
 sight as for Romeo, or the lovers in the old pictures of 
 the golden age. He looked like those pictures : a wreath 
 would have been as natural in his hair as in Apollo s. I 
 made sketches of him as Apollo : I drew him in many 
 romantic characters oh, how could it all have been?" 
 said the girl, again with that same look of wondering at 
 herself which her musing face had worn that morning 
 when she sat by her studio- table with Mr. Leigh. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 307 
 
 What order of masculine personages wore wreaths in 
 their hair aunt Persis did not clearly know, nor was Romeo 
 the most familiar of characters to her ; but she began to 
 perceive that the girl whom she had always considered 
 such a marvel of discretion amid her crowd of lovers had 
 had her time of young rashness too. And she asked, with 
 some renewal of critical feeling towards that New- York 
 lady of the first society, "Did that Mrs. Bingham know 
 about all this ? Was it at her house that the young man 
 sat to you for his picture? " 
 
 44 O aunt Persy ! he never sat to me anywhere : it was 
 not so bad as that. All the pictures I ever made of him 
 were from memory : it was easy enough to do that with 
 his photograph (which I had, of course, after we were 
 engaged), and with Kate always to look at, who had his 
 very features. Did you suppose I ever was intimate with 
 him the way I have been with with Mr. Leigh? Never, 
 never, did I have such an acquaintance with Carroll De 
 Lancey or any other man," declared the girl impetu 
 ously. 
 
 " Yes/ Monny went on more quietly, " Mrs. Bingham 
 knew about it very soon ; because Carroll De Laucey told 
 her that he was going to marry me, and never anybody 
 else. She told him that I was only a school-girl, away 
 from my friends, and that he must write to them. I knew 
 afterwards that she was sorry it had happened : she 
 thought it was too sudden. She was not to blame at all. 
 She had a great many social and other duties, and had not 
 observed, you see ; for, in all our acquaintance, it was 
 only a very, very few times that I ever saw him." 
 
 4t And did the young man write to your friends? " asked 
 Mrs, Doane. 
 
 "Certainly; and I wrote o them too. They were in 
 Europe. It \\g,s the year that my cousin Annie Slabwell 
 
308 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 was married, and her father arid mother went abroad with 
 her on the bridal tour that she made with her husband. 
 So they wrote me back from Europe ; and I remembei 
 uncte John s writing me that he should not object to 
 Cam 11 De Lancey because he was a Southerner. lie said 
 all the honest men in the United States, North and South, 
 would have to pull together yet to save this country from 
 its rascals ; and, since the old quarrel of slavery was 
 fought out and ended, the next thing to be done was to 
 forget it, and the best way to forget was for Southern 
 ers and Northerners to intermarry. I remember that 
 uncle John wrote me out all those sentiments. And aunt 
 Helen, she liked the family because it was an aristocratic 
 one. And although they both wrote, of course, that I was 
 too young, and things mnst not go any farther till they 
 came home, still they did not really oppose, you see. And 
 so I gave my promise to Carroll that I would some time 
 marry him. And it all happened, * said Monny, u in one 
 short school-term. Kate s coming to Madame Melville s, 
 and her asking me to be her chum, and the going to West 
 Point, and my engagement to her brother, it all came 
 about in that single term ; and it was at the end of the 
 term that the New-Orleans journey was. At that time I 
 was expecting aunt Helen and all of them home very 
 soon ; but they had not arrived yet : so I was going with 
 Kate to spend the vacation in Maryland, at the estate of 
 some relatives of hers, named Carroll, who had invited us. 
 41 So I was packing my trunks. Kate had been gone to 
 West Point two or three days, staying with her brother 
 there, who had been taken suddenly ill ; but I had left 
 off severe anxiety about him, because Kate had written 
 me back that he would be well and out again right away, 
 and would be sure to come and see us a few days in 
 Maryland. Well, I was doing my last packing, and I 
 
A KEVEKEND IDOL. 809 
 
 remeiLfx.. I had just laid in a trunk that ver) ball-dress I 
 had worn at West Point, when Kate burst into the room, 
 just come from the depot. She carried the most extraor 
 dinary big bundle, and locked the door behind her the 
 second she was in the room. Then she tore open the 
 bundle, and there fell out of it trousers and hats; ana 
 she began to strip off her own dress, and put on the 
 trousers, as if she had gone mad. Yes, she had in that 
 bundle a full suit of her brother s clothes ; and she dressed 
 herself in them from top to toe before I fairly understood 
 any thing, though she talked as fast as she could speak. 
 It seemed that Gen. Warwick had had a stroke, and was 
 on his ver} 7 death-bed, and had telegraphed to Carroll De 
 Laucey to come straight on and see him. And the tele 
 gram had come to West Point while Kate was there ; and, 
 because her brother was too sick to go, she had determined 
 to go herself, dressed up in her brother s clothes, and pre 
 tend to be him." 
 
 "Goodness alive!" cried the matron. "Pretend to 
 be a young man ? 
 
 "Yes," said Monny. " I had seen her fix herself up 
 to represent her brother before. It was for some private 
 theatricals we had at our school. And the very wig and 
 false mustache she had worn then were in our closet now ; 
 and Kate had them out and fixed on in a Hash ; and then 
 she imitated her brother s voice and air so, it was his very 
 self. Well, she said I must go with her, dressed up like 
 a West-Point cadet too. She had brought a boy s suit of 
 clothes with her on purpose for me." 
 
 "And what on earth did she want to drag you into her 
 wild doings for? " cried Mrs. Doane. 
 
 " Why, for company on the journey. She said how 
 could she go travelling 9 thousand miles all alone, dressed 
 up in men s clothes, and nobody with her to know that she 
 
310 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 was a girl, if she should be sick, or any accident happen. 
 Of course, I could not help seeing that would be fright 
 ful," said Monny. " Then I begged her to go in her own 
 dress. I told her, if she would only go as herself, I would 
 go with her in a moment, and she could explain to her 
 uncle why her brother could not come, and take all his 
 dying messages. And Kate said that was perfectly ab 
 surd : if Gen. Warwick saw her come into his room, only 
 a girl, of no political consequence, instead of her brother, 
 he would be in such a rage of disappointment he would 
 die of rage on the spot, and then there would be no will 
 made. And besides, she said, for two girls no older than 
 we to go travelling without a duenna twould be most 
 vulgar and indecent." 
 
 " Indecent ! " cried the confounded matron. "And was 
 it less indecent to go travelling in men s clothes? " 
 
 " I really think it seemed so to Kate," answered Monny, 
 " she was so used to the European ideas. Anyway she 
 wouldn t listen a word to my proposal. And she began 
 to get very angry with me for refusing to fall in with her 
 plan, for there wasn t a minute to lose. And I remem 
 ber, in the midst of her distraction and storming, I put 
 in the question, whether her brother approved of this, 
 of her going to Louisiana, pretending to be him. And 
 she said that her brother did not even know Gen. War 
 wick s telegram had come ; that he was out of his head, 
 and could not be told any thing. And that frightened 
 me : I thought he was sicker than they had let me know, 
 and I began to cry. And Kate dropped down on the bed, 
 and cried desperately too, and said I could never go to see 
 her brother, however sick he was : it wouldn t be proper. 
 And the one only thing I could do to help him was to go 
 on this journey with her ; and much he would think I 
 cared for him, when he got better and found out that I 
 
A KEVEKEND IDOL. 811 
 
 had refuse* 1 to do such a little thing for his sake. And 
 It broke me all down, Kate s talking that way. Really, 
 you know, to stand making little moral objections when 
 people are going wild with distress, and begging you to 
 do something to help them, it does seem as if you were 
 just a hard- hearted, unsympathizing prig ; and I began 
 to give way a little. And, the minute Kate saw it, she 
 began putting me into the cadet s clothes ; and, before I 
 fairly realized any thing, we were in the carriage, both of 
 us in cadet s uniform, and on our way to the depot. " 
 
 How in the world did you get away from the school 
 in that rig? Where were your teachers?" asked Mrs. 
 Doane, feeling that somebody should have been present 
 to stay that scandalous flight. 
 
 " Oh, I don t know ! " said Monny. " Kate managed 
 every thing. Servants always did just as she told them, 
 no more asking her questions than if she had been a 
 queen. I only knew there was a carriage standing icady 
 for us, and we got into it and off, with nobody to stop 
 us. It was about dark, and it had begun to rain, I re 
 member : so the waterproof cloaks that we threw on to 
 hide our clothes looked all right ; and I believe Kate car 
 ried her wig and mustache in her pocket, and put them 
 on at the depot, after she dismissed the carriage. But it 
 was in the carriage, before we got to the depot, that she 
 cut off my hair.* 
 
 44 Cut off your hair! " repeated Mrs. Doane, aghast at 
 every new disclosure of the actions of that possessed 
 young woman of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 44 Yes, I wanted her to. I couldn t do any thing with 
 my hair at all. Kate managed hers perfectly. To begin 
 with, her head was unusually small and round : it was one 
 of her beauties. And, although her hair was long, it was 
 very straight and smooth, so she pinned it in braids tight 
 
312 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 round her head, and then put the wig right on over them, 
 and that just enlarged her head to the size of her brother s : 
 so, with the false mustache, she was his perfect image. 
 But I had no wig ; and my hair, being curly and very long 
 then, wouldn t stay at all tucked up under the cadet s cap, 
 and of course, having once put on the disguise, I was all in a 
 tremble for fear of being found out in it. And I had some 
 scissors in my hand-bag, and I made Kate shear my hair 
 all off before we got to the depot. We gathered up the 
 hair as it dropped under the scissors ; and I can remember 
 now Kate poking all round over the bottom of the carriage, 
 in the dark, to feel if there were any stray locks : she said 
 twould look like such a suspicious slaughter of innocents if 
 newly-chopped off hair was left lying in carriages. And 
 then we got to the depot, and she pulled me into some dark 
 corner, where we changed our hats for the cadets caps ; 
 and she opened one of my trunks, and threw in it the hats 
 and my cut-off hair, and, before I ktfew, we were on the 
 night-train, and rushing out of New York southward." 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 313 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 44 \ iTELL," resumed Mouny to the auditor, trho had 
 VV come to listen very anxiously to the unfolding 
 of this strange tale, " when we had got off sure and safe, 
 Kate began to be in great spirits. I did not quite under 
 stand then how she could be so perfectly easy about her 
 brother ; for she had a devoted affection for him. But I 
 knew afterwards that his sickness was all caused by his 
 having taken too much wine in a student s frolic ; that 
 he had got so drunk really it brought on such fever 
 and delirium, his mates got frightened about him, and tele 
 graphed for his sister. But the doctor she had for him 
 knew all about such cases, and just how long they would 
 last, and that was how she could calculate so confidently 
 on his being out again at a set time, while yet he was so 
 sick that he couldn t be told any thing about the telegram, 
 which was what seemed a little mysterious to me then. 
 Kate s only explanation to me was, that the doctor said 
 he had a strong young constitution, which would bring him 
 out all right in a few days. And then she repeated what 
 she had said before, that a little Puritan like me would be 
 just the wife for Cal : when he was married, he would take 
 hotter care of himself, and not be sick." 
 
 " Well, of all the deceitful hussies! " exclaimed Mrs. 
 Doane, who considered that her well-behaved Monny had 
 been the victim of as precious a pair of young scamps 
 as a slave holding aristocracy ever produced. 
 
 u Ko," insisted Monny, " she was not deceitful, as she 
 
314 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 saw things. Naturally she would not tell me, when I was 
 engaged to her brother, exactly what had made his strange 
 illness ; but I don t think she considered those habits any 
 thing really against him as a fine match. Her notions 
 were, that it was quite in the order of things for elegant 
 young men to be very wild before they were married ; 
 that wives were expressly made to steady husbands down. 
 She had always a very funny style of talking about men, 
 as if they were somehow in the care of women, I mean, 
 as if women were much the most competent to all affairs 
 where managing and contriving was to be done. That 
 was one thing which made her so gay on our journey. 
 She said she had got just the chance she had wanted all 
 her life, a chance to be in a man s place, with a woman s 
 gumption. There ll be a will made that will stand in law 
 when I get to Gen. Warwick s bedside, says she, which 
 it s more than likely there wouldn t be if Cal was there 
 himself, men have such pragmatical notions about giving 
 their word. Gen. Warwick will want me to swear eternal 
 enmity to Rome, of course ; that is to say, Boston : there s 
 nothing I ll swear quicker. What s the use of being bora 
 in this atrocious country, if you can t take a little practical 
 Yankee view of things? Whom does Gen. Warwick really 
 want his estates to go to? Carroll and I, impoverished 
 orphans of a sire who gave his life and his fortunes for the 
 sacred cause, said Kate, in that orating style of hers: 
 4 Whom would he most hate and abhor to have them go to ? 
 she went on. Those renegade Regdons, snug and smug 
 already in all the unspoiled goods that they had the mean 
 long-headedness to run away with ? Or Northern carpet 
 baggers? wouldn t they plunder it all, even if Gen. 
 Warwick could leave his money to the State by anj r will 
 which would stand in law ; which of course it wouldn t, 
 with all the fantastic conditions he would put in. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 315 
 
 " TVell," said Monny, " I had always been used to hear 
 Kate run on that way, and I had no doubt what she said 
 tfas all true about Gen. Warwick s own wishes. Kate 
 would never have tried to get possession of a fortune that 
 others had a more real right to than herself," said Moimy, 
 correctly discriminating that the Southern girl s unscrupu- 
 lousness was of the sort which extends only to means, 
 not to ends. " But I felt more and more doubtful and 
 troubled," Monny went on, 4 about the way she was going 
 to get it, the false clothes we were dressed up in, and 
 every thing. Kate, she kept up all the time as brave 
 and merry as could be : she said we were like Rosamond 
 and Celia in the Forest of Arden. But it wasn t the Forest 
 of Arden : it was the American railroad-cars, full of strange 
 men there were hardly any women travelling in the night- 
 train. And when the daylight came next morning it was 
 much more dreadful : I did not dare stir out of my seat 
 in that cadet s coat without any tails ; and oh, my feet in 
 trousers ! So, continued New-England Monny, Kate 
 got out all alone at the places where our train, which was 
 a through one, stopped for refreshments. I could not eat, 
 anyway, as I began to have a sick headache with riding 
 all night in the cars, and no sleep. But Kate took all her 
 meals regularly ; for she said to take all your meals regu 
 larly, and let nothing interfere with them, was the very 
 strongest mark which distinguished a man from a woman. 
 And if you could have seen her buy herself a cigar after 
 the meals, and pretend to take two or three puffs at it on 
 the depot platforms while she looked after the baggage ! 
 No, Kate was really not a coarse girl," insisted Monny, 
 as the face of Mrs. Doane took a freshly horrified expres 
 sion. "It only seemed to be her way of keeping cool and 
 unconcerned to amuse herself by putting all those extra 
 touches into her part. And nobody found her out in it; 
 
316 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 nobody, from beginning to end, ever imagined that she 
 was no f really a young man. But /got found out." 
 
 " OI. ! " gasped aunt Persis. 
 
 " Yes, I did. It was when Kate got out at one of the 
 stations. My headache was growing very bad then ; and 1 
 put up my hand, not thinking, and leaned my head back 
 on it a little, while the cars stopped. And a man in the 
 sea* behind me suddenly snatched the hand I had put up so, 
 and whispered insultingly over my shoulder, Look here, 
 pretty miss, a girl who wants to pass herself off for a boy 
 while she goes travelling with her young man had better 
 not have such hands as yours. Give me a kiss while 
 your other spark is out of sight, and I won t tell your 
 little game. And all the while the terrible coarse man 
 said those words, he held my hand so tight I could not pull 
 it away, and I was going to cry out to the conductor, or 
 somebody, for help, when it struck all over me that there 
 was no help I could call for ; that I had put myself, by 
 that dress, out of the ranks of respectable girls ; that I 
 was a character who could be taken up by the police. It 
 was the most dreadful sensation, to know that I was in my 
 own country of America, where men, North and South, 
 can be counted on to be respectful to all women who 
 behave properly, but that I was in an appearance of such 
 improper behavior, the worst man in any crowd was at 
 liberty to speak to me just as he liked, and the best man 
 could only think that I deserved it, and ought to be 
 arrested by a constable. And while I stood dumb and 
 faint, with this dreadful realizing that it was not the Forest 
 of Aivleu, Kate came sauntering back into the car, twirling 
 her false mustache. You see, the man behind me had 
 seized the moment for all his insulting ways when the 
 passengers were hurrying in and out of the car, and 
 nobody paying attention ; but, the minute he saw Kate 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 317 
 
 corning back, he let go my hand. For, you see, he never 
 imagined that she, too, was a girl in disguise : he believed 
 that she was really my young man, and my spark, as he 
 said in that slang of his. Well, the train started on ; and 
 the man staid just where he was. in the seat behind us, 
 from a curiosity to watch us, I suppose. And as K:tc 
 eat down beside me I told her right away, in French, just 
 what the man had said to me, and all his behavior. Bu! 
 instead of starting up quick, as I supposed she woul 1, to 
 change our seats into another car, she just turned slowly 
 and awfully round on the man, looking him straight in the 
 eyes, while she said, in a low undertone that yet sounded 
 more fierce than you can imagine through the rattle of the 
 cars, 4 You touch her again, or breathe one syllable of 
 what you know, and I ll have your life ! And the man 
 he was a flashy-looking man, about thirty-five actu 
 ally shrank all away in his seat, as if death was going 
 to spring on him right out of Kate s eyes. She wore, 
 all through the journey, a seven-barrelled revolver in her 
 breast-pocket, with the handle stuck up to show ; but you 
 would have said her eyes were the deadly thing, rather than 
 the pistol. And the man, looking at them, just whispered 
 out, scared and abject, c I promise to keep dark, sir ; but, 
 if I might drop a friendly warning to ye, make her put her 
 gloves on, put her gloves on ! 
 
 " At that, I tried (for all my gloves were in my trunks) 
 to stuff my hands under the edge of my jacket ; and Kite 
 she corrected me with, Crazy child ! put them into y>iir 
 trousers pockets, as a boy does. You see, nothing could 
 be more stupid than I was, or cleverer than Kate, from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 " Well, while all this went on, the seats nearest un had 
 happened to be quite empty, so man} 7 passengers had left 
 the car at the last station, and Kate kept half turned 
 
818 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 roimcl in her seat, holding that man steadily in her eye : 
 and although I was terribly afraid that he would break 
 from under the spell which Kate seemed to havo laid on 
 him, when the conductor came along, and give information 
 that I was a girl, and not a bo} 7 , he did not ; be let the 
 conductor go by without a word. And he never stirred, 
 O" spoke again, till the train began to slack up to stop at 
 the next station ; then he bent forward a little, and said 
 to Kate, as if he was a prisoner and she his guard, I 
 beg your pardon, sir; but the next depot is where I was 
 going to get off/ 
 
 " I will see you landed, sirrah, says Kate in her most 
 tremendous tragedy style ; and, when the train stopped, 
 she just marched out with the man, and kept her eye on 
 him, from the very platform of the cars, till the train rolled 
 out of sight of the depot, where I could see him standing 
 still, as if he hardly dared to breathe. 
 
 " Well, Kate came back to her seat by me ; and the first 
 word she said was, I am disappointed in you, Monny 
 Rivers, completely disappointed. In the theatricals at 
 Madame Melville s you did Juliet s soliloquy before taking 
 the poison so like a born stage-genius, I supposed noth 
 ing would be easier to you than a little bit of acting 
 like this. I answered that I could act Juliet because I 
 thought I was Juliet, I forgot myself entirely ; but that I 
 could not forget myself now : I remembered every minute 
 that I was Monny Rivers, not in my proper clothes." 
 
 Of the two. Monny had the real dramatic genius ; Kate 
 De Lancey was only theatrical : still it was the latter who 
 could bring all her clever mimetic talent admirably to bear 
 in a piece of artifice like this masculine masquerade, while 
 the girl who had made quite an inspired personation of 
 Juliet wholly lost her power. 
 
 " And then," said Monny, continuing her narration to 
 
A REVEKEND IDOL. 319 
 
 Mrs. Doune, " I gathered up my courage to tell Kate that 
 I was not going any farther in those clothes. She asked 
 me if I was mad. I told her no, but that I should be if 
 I tried any longer to play a part that she must see I was 
 a miserable failure in. I said, I cannot put people down 
 an you do, Kate : I have not the majesty, nor the self- 
 control. I am of worse weakness in this than you think. 
 I came near laughing right out when you turned round on 
 that man in such a blood-thirsty manner. I shook inside, 
 both with laughter at the idea of his being so afraid of 
 you, only a dressed-up girl, and with terror lest he would 
 find you out. I shall laugh and cry pretty soon all in 
 the same breath : I shall have the hysterics, like Lilly 
 Lambert at school. 
 
 " Kate said, Would I pretend that I was such a silly, 
 sentimental idiot as Lilly Lambert? then, when she found 
 out that I was actually in earnest, we had a tremendous 
 battle. What I proposed was to stop at the city of Jackson 
 in Mississippi, where the train was to arrive very soon, go 
 up to a hotel (taking one of my trunks) , dress myself out 
 of it in my own clothes, and then go on the rest of the 
 journey with Kate, in my proper character. Of course I 
 did not mean to desert her utterly. For I had started and 
 come thus far with her ; and, if there ever had been a 
 possible moment when she would have given up the jour 
 ney if I had stood out firm in my refusal to take it with 
 her, that chance was lost now ; and I felt I was so far 
 involved in her action as to have no right to forsake her 
 in that dangerous disguise that she had always been afraid 
 to travel .in quite alone. But I told her, for myself, I 
 must go back into my own dress. I said, You have 
 decided, that, when we get to New Orleans, it will be best 
 for me to be left at a hotel there while you go on alone to 
 your uncle s place, which you say is six miles out of the 
 
320 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 city. Perhaps he will live several days yet ; and what 
 shall I do all that time at the hotel ? I shall be sure to get 
 found out there, unless 1 tell lies that I cannot tell, and 
 which would all be useless if I were willing to tell them : 
 for the blushes will go over and over my face, if any man 
 boks hard at me in these clothes ; that is something 
 beyond my power to prevent. And, when I am found 
 out, it is not merely that I shall be put in the lock-up, 
 but men who hunt out every thing as constables and 
 detectives do will hunt out all about me just the same if I 
 do not speak one word. They will find out who I came 
 to New Orleans with ; they will find out about you, 
 Kate, and that you are another girl dressed up in man s 
 clothes and then what will be ? 
 
 * Well, Kate quieted down a little as I said all this; 
 for, of course, she had been wofully disappointed in me, 
 as she said, and she could not help being afraid that I 
 should be found out again, and with far worse conse 
 quences, when she w r as not with me to crush people. So 
 she sat silent, and thinking a moment, then she broke 
 out, 
 
 " Now, Plymouth Rock, now, Miss Bunker Hill, will 
 you hear reason ? If I give in to you on the main point, 
 will you absolutely obey me in the details ? If I consent 
 to your changing back into a girl, you cannot go back into 
 your own name : for I shall stay a man, and you cannot 
 travel with me without taking my name ; you must pass as 
 my wife. I asked her if I could not as well be her sister. 
 
 " Good heavens ! she said. If we leave the train for 
 this business, haven t we got to stay overnight at Jackson ; 
 and what a frightful thing to be shut up alone in separate 
 rooms all night at a strange hotel ! : 
 
 4 Lord save her!" ejaculated aunt Peisis, "if she 
 wasn t just a girl, after all ! Smoking cigars, and threaten- 
 
A PwEv^EBEND IDOL. 321 
 
 ing men s lives with seven-barrelled guns, and yet too 
 timersome to sleep alone in a strange place." 
 
 k Of course," answered Monny, tl we wouldn t either 
 of us have liked that. And I was expecting then that my 
 name would some time really be Mrs. Carroll DL- Lar^ey ; 
 and so, as Kate said, it would only be anticipating the 
 future a little to take that name now, and I agreed to it. 
 So we left the cars at Jackson, and went up to a hotel 
 and staid all night; and Kate managed every tiling so 
 cleverly,, just as when we left our school in New York, 
 that I went into the hotel a boy, and came out of it a 
 young lady, without anybody s detecting it. And our 
 names were registered at the hotel as Mr. and Mrs. 
 Carroll De Lancey ; and we took the earliest morning- 
 train, and went on to New Orleans, and had no mishaps, 
 except that we forgot to have the trunk that we had 
 taken up to the hotel checked at the depot ; and it was 
 left behind on the platform there. But we never sent 
 back for it : I told Kate there was nothing in it that was 
 worth the trouble. You see, it was that same trunk which 
 held the West- Point ball-dress ; for my travelling-suit, 
 that I was all dressed in to go to Maryland, had been flung 
 into that trunk, hat and all, in New York, when Kate 
 dressed me in such a hurry in the cadet s uniform. The 
 uniform that T took off at the Jackson Hotel was in the 
 trunk now, :>f course ; and there was not much else in it 
 but the smashed old ball-dress and my cut-off hair ; and 
 so we let the trunk go, and never saw it again. And I 
 felt so comfortable to be in my own dress again, that, 
 just before we got to New Orleans, I went sound asleep 
 in the cars. I remember it, because it was the only time 
 in my life thit I ever could fall asleep in the cars. But 
 all the night before, at the hotel, I had not been able to 
 shot my eyes for thinking what if we should be found out 
 
322 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 in the morning : so at last I was fagged out enough to 
 drop asleep even on the train. Well, I woke up out of 
 my nap with a great start. Our train had stopped ; my 
 head was on Kate s shoulder ; and her eyes were flashing 
 lightnings (the way they did when she was angry) after 
 somebody who seemed to have just left the car. I asked 
 her what was the matter. ; That sham duchess ! said 
 she, 4 that humbug Madonna ! She presumes on her 
 beauty to be insolent. I looked her down in her low-born 
 curiosity, low-born she is, I say, for all her Queen of 
 Heaven airs, and style of beauty. The one thing a real 
 gentlewoman does not do is to pry and peer. I looked 
 her down. She ll know a De Lancey the next time she 
 sees one : she ll know her betters, and try her stares on 
 somebody else. 
 
 " 4 Why, what ever did she do? I said. 
 
 " Do? says Kate. Wasn t I so pleased to see you 
 asleep at last, you poor little wakeful owl, I just hugged 
 you up a little, that you might sleep sounder ; and with 
 your pathetic short locks, that I d cropped off all uneven 
 in that dark old carriage, twirling in such babyish rings 
 over your bigoted Boston head, didn t I kiss you one email 
 kiss, forgetting that I was a man ; and along must come 
 My Lady, and turn round with her slurring stare. Eye 
 lashes half a yard long ought to be sweeping round in 
 search of good sights, and not evil. She s a swindle, with 
 her divine gray eyes and a fool, a fool ! She might 
 have seen, through a forest of false mustaches, that I 
 kissed you like your mamma, and not like your lover of 
 an improper sort. 
 
 4 4 O Kate ! I said, * how could she help staring ? 
 Don t, don t forget that you are a man again ! 
 
 "Kate said she wouldn t, and that she had forgotten 
 once in a worse way than I : so now she was more than 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 323 
 
 even with me, she said. You see, Kate was truly good- 
 natured and generous. And that was the last of our mis 
 haps. Very soon we were in the main depot of New 
 Orleans. And an odd chance happened to us there. I 
 had barely stepped from the cars when I heard somebody 
 saying, in such an astonished voice, Why, how come you 
 here, Miss Rivers, and with Mr. Carroll De Lancey? Is 
 Miss Kate along too? 
 
 "I turned round, and there was Mrs. Bingham s maid 
 Jane. Then I remembered Kate had told me on the 
 journey that she was afraid of crossing the Binghams 
 somewhere ; for they had gone South a week before. 
 "Well, Kate seized Jane s arm now, and said quickly, 
 Where is your mistress? She s gone up to St. Louis 
 with Gen. Bingham, says Jane. 
 
 " 4 When are they coming back? Kate asked. 
 
 " Gen. Bingham is not coming back at all, said Jane. 
 * He s going on up the river. And Mrs. Bingham we some 
 expected to-night, and that s why me and Halifax came to 
 the cars to wait on her: but she hain t come; so she 
 won t be here now for another twenty-four hours certain. 
 
 144 Go and tell Halifax, says Kate, to get two swift 
 saddle-horses one for me, and the other for himself 
 to go out to Ashcroft, Gen. Warwick s place. The gen 
 eral is dying. Tell Halifax to be here with the hoises the 
 quickest possible. 
 
 " This turns out good luck, instead of bad, said Kate 
 to me as Jane hurried off. The Binghams have rooms at 
 the St. Charles Hotel : so you can be bestowed right 
 there ; while, as for me, I shall have no loss of time get 
 ting to Gen. Warwick. Halifax was born a slave in New 
 Orleans, and knows the whole country round here. 
 
 " Stall you tell him who you really are? I whispered 
 to Kate. Halifax? no ; Jane? yes, said she. l She s a 
 
324 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 shifty creature, and nobody knows what I may want of 
 her yet. So Kate took Jane aside, when she came back, 
 and told her the secret. And Halifax came very soon with 
 the two saddle-horses ; and Jane hushed up her surprise, 
 though she did give a little bit of a cry when she saw 
 Kate spring on her horse just like a man. 
 
 4 Mercy!" echoed the Puritan matron, with another 
 cry. 
 
 44 Oh, she carried it off wonderfully ! " rejoined Monny. 
 " Nobody ever mistrusted that she was not really Car 
 roll, no, not Gen. Warwick himself. She got there be 
 fore he died, and the will was made as she wanted it, and 
 he lived only a few hours after ; and I had word of all 
 this the next afternoon, when Halifax came riding into the 
 city again, with a note from Kate to me, saying that it 
 was all over, and I could tell Mrs. Bingham now, if she 
 had got back. 
 
 ""Well, Mrs. Bingham arrived about dark at the hotel, 
 and I had just done telling her how I came to be there, 
 when Kate came herself. Halifax happened to be in the 
 room just then, taking some orders from his mistress, 
 so Mrs. Bingham was forced to speak to Kate as if she 
 was Carroll, till Halifax went out. Then she said very 
 sternly, 4 Kate De Lancey, take off those mad riggings, 
 and go to bed ! 
 
 44 4 1 shall obey you, madam, says Kate, bowing very 
 low and humbly. She had been trained in that French 
 convent school in a beautiful respect to superiors ; and 
 she really liked Mrs. Bingham, who was a very queenly 
 lady herself. So, with only those few words, and a lovely 
 meek courtesy, she came right away to her room, our 
 room, which we had together in the hotel, close to Mrs. 
 Bingham s. But when she got there, with only me, you 
 know, she tore off her wig and mustaches, arid danced 
 
A KEVEREND IDOL. 325 
 
 round with her long hair tumbling over her man s 
 and hugged me round the neck, and just went wild with 
 triumph. 4 1 defy them to do any thing about it now ! * 
 sa d she, Mrs. Biugham, or anybody else. Will they 
 g:i embarrassing the hapless orphan of a murdered sire by 
 betraying what shifts she was reduced to to get her own T 
 They ll never do it. Gen. Bingham went to see Gen. 
 Warwick once, himself, to persuade him to provide for 
 Carroll and me in his will. And what have I done, but 
 pacify a poor dying old hero by promising what he asked ? 
 And, if Cal doesn t fulfil, how can I help it? And Kate 
 whirled me round the room in her joy, crying that we 
 should all be rich now forever, and could be married 
 right away, the whole of us, and go to live in Europe. 
 And all I knew was that she carried every thing through 
 successfully ; and, although Mrs. Bingham disapproved 
 dreadfully, she didn t see any way to interfere, I suppose, 
 at that late stage of affairs." 
 
 " Well, no," admitted Mrs. Doane, "I don t know as 
 anybody could have seen it a clear duty to tell what that 
 harum-scarum girl had done, bad as it was, playing tricks 
 at death-beds. Since it seems the rich man had had 
 nobody in his mind for real personal heirs but them 
 two orphans, so, very likely, at the last he would have 
 left them his money pretty much the same, if the girl 
 hadn t done that wild piece of daring, to make sur?. 
 Most likely the New- York lady, Mrs. Bingham, thought 
 so, and felt no right to do any thing that might stir up 
 strife about the will, seeing there was them who would 
 have bee:i eager to set it aside so as to come into the 
 property themselves. But, anyway, twas a tenibJe 
 mixed-up business ; and I hope Did you go out to 
 that place at all yourself, that country-place where you 
 say this Gen. Warwick died?" suddenly asked the 
 
 ? 
 
326 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 matron, feeling that it would be some relief to know that 
 Monny had been kept from the immediate locality where 
 a will was made under such conditions. 
 
 "Oh, no!" said Monny. "And Kate herself nevei 
 went out there again in man s clothes. She had brought 
 a trunk with her from New York ; and she changed back 
 into her own dress that very night Mrs. Bingham sent 
 Jane in to help her dress, I remember. Then Kate staid 
 hid in our room, and never stirred out of it till her 
 brother came : he came only two or three days after 
 us." 
 
 44 Brother came? " repeated Mrs. Doane in bewilder 
 ment. 
 
 "Certainly," said Monny. "Kate had left directions 
 for him to follow us just as soon as he was able to travel ; 
 and, when he arrived in New Orleans, Kate slipped out 
 of the hotel by a back door, unobserved, met him at the 
 depot, came back to the hotel leaning on her brother s 
 arm as a young lady (coming in by the front entrance 
 of the hotel this time), making all the parade she could, 
 on purpose to attract attention. Her plan was, you see, 
 to represent that Miss De Lancey, the sister, was the 
 one of them who had just arrived." 
 
 "Mercy on us! If that girl wasn t the beat-all!" 
 ejaculated Mrs. Doane, as she gradually took in this last 
 transformation of Miss Kate. 
 
 "He got there, the real Carroll did," resumed Mon 
 ny, " just in time for the funeral. So the brother and 
 sister went together, each in their own proper character, 
 to the funeral, and then together again the next day to 
 hear the will read ; and from first to last nobody ever 
 guessed but that Carroll De Lancey himself was with 
 Gen. Warwick when he died, and that it was his sistei 
 who came a few days later. You see, Kate never over 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 327 
 
 looked any least little circumstance that might help to 
 mix her identity more completely with her brother s. 
 For instance, all the time that we two were on the cars, 
 travelling South, Carroll was absent from his school- 
 quarters. His mates had him in hiding somewhere, away 
 from the military academy : Kate had charged them to 
 keep him so. I suppose the reason she gave them was 
 that she did not wish the school authorities to know about 
 his drinking so much ; but she had the deeper reason of 
 the disguise she was going to put on : she had to pro 
 vide, of course, against the appearance of a Carroll De 
 Lancey in two places at once. And I know the cadets 
 who had her brother in charge managed just as she told 
 them. She was so beautiful, you see, young men would 
 do any thing for her." 
 
 Whom did you come back from New Orleans with ? 
 suddenly asked Mrs. Doane, with some passing alarm at 
 finding that Monny s girl-companion had so completely 
 imposed on all beholders the idea that she was a young 
 man. 
 
 " Oh ! I came back alone with Mrs. Bingham," replied 
 Monny, looking up unconsciously. "And I never saw 
 Carroll De Lancey again. You see, I fell all out of love 
 with him one miserable evening, right there at the St. 
 Charles Hotel, so that in my heart I really wanted to 
 break off my engagement then ; but I did not feel it right 
 to when I could give no positive reason. But, when uncle 
 John came home, he broke the engagement right off. He 
 knew positive reasons why I should not marry him. O 
 aunt Persy ! uncle Jot n had found out bad things about 
 him in Paris; that, besides drinking too Much wine, he 
 was very wild in other ways in in ways not to be 
 talked about. Uncle John was more angry than I ever 
 saw him before in all my life ; for he found that he had 
 
328 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 gone right on in all those unmentionable dissipations just 
 the same while he was engaged to me. When I knew 
 that (aunt Helen told me), I understood then all my blind 
 feeling about him that unhappy night at the hotel when I 
 repented so that I was engaged to him. It was the night 
 after the will was made. Kate staid out at Ashcroft, but 
 Carre 11 rode into the city to spend the evening with me in 
 Mrs. Bingham s parlor. She was in the bed-room of her 
 maid Jane, who was taken very sick, most of the time that 
 evening : so I was much alone with Carroll. He wanted 
 me to marry him right away ; and perhaps his head was a 
 little turned by having come into his fortune, or he had 
 been taking too much wine again oh ! I cannot explain 
 it, aunt Persy ; only I did not like his manners that night 
 at all. I wished he would go ; I wished Mrs. Bingham 
 would come back into the room and oh, I wished my 
 mother was alive ! I was so young it was only a blind, 
 blind repulsion I had for him ; but I understood it all 
 afterwards," said the Puritan girl, whose Parisian-South 
 ern lover had been by no means a villain, no betrayer of 
 innocence in high circles or low : he had merely plunged 
 so deeply into the world s old, old ways of evil, that, even 
 in these young years, the returnless delicacy of the heart 
 had passed away. 
 
 "And you say you never saw him again?" said Mrs, 
 Doane. 
 
 "No; because we left New Orleans (Mrs. Bingham, 
 and poor Jane, and I) the very next morning, at daybreak. 
 It was the New-Orleans climate that had caused Jane a 
 sickness ; and the only hope of saving her life, the doctors 
 said, was to get her right off on the water : so Mrs. Bing 
 ham, who was very fond of Jane (she had lived with 
 her many years), started with her at once. And she 
 f ook me with her merely because it was more proper, of 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 329 
 
 course, than for me to be left to go home with the others. 
 But poor Jane died 011 the passage, and was carried home 
 to Mrs. Bingham s only to be buried." 
 
 " Did not the young man come after you? " asked Mrs. 
 Doans. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! He came right on to New York. But, by 
 the time he got there, uncle John had come home ; and 
 he saw Carroll De Lancey, and forbade him ever to 2ome 
 near me again. And I never have seen him since." 
 
 * And never have told your uncle and aunt, you say, 
 about that journey South? " 
 
 4 No," replied Monny. "You see, I was staying at 
 Mrs. Bingham s when uncle John came. She had become 
 like an old friend to me ; for one day, in asking me about 
 my parents, it came out that a younger brother of hers 
 had been poor papa s most intimate friend in college 
 she remembered to have heard all about how he was 
 killed. So, in all this trouble of breaking off my engage 
 ment, she was like a mother to me ; and when she said, I 
 would not mention this journey to New Orleans, even to 
 your friends, I did not." 
 
 " Well, doubtless she had good reasons. She seems to 
 have meant the right thing." 
 
 "Indeed she did. And it happened, that, right after 
 all this, I went to Europe in the bridal party of my cousin 
 Harry Shibwell, who was married now ; and his wife s 
 father and mother and myself, all went in the party 
 abroad. And before I came home from Europe I heard 
 of poor Kate s cleatn." 
 
 Her death too?" repeated Mrs. Doane, startled for 
 a moment (but the thought soon faded away) at finding 
 how few were the original witnesses left alive to Monny s 
 strangely entangled adventure. 
 
 * 4 Yes : s le died in Italy, in a year after her marriage 
 
330 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 there to that nobleman she was engaged to. I was truly 
 fonder of Kate than of any girl I ever knew : and, after 
 her death, her memory and that of her brother all mingled, 
 and grew in my mind to something sad and tearful : it 
 was as if he was dead too, and his faults no more to be 
 spokec of. I do not mean that I had any tenderness for 
 Carroll De Lancey as for a lost lover, for I had not. You 
 see, I could never have loved him truly ; for all the me-uory 
 of him faded out swiftly and utterly as a dream except 
 the lesson of it : that lasted, and went deep. I never 
 forgot that once in my life I had found a young man so 
 charming as to fancy that I wished to be with him always, 
 and yet that I grew sick to death of him all in a minute. 
 
 aunt Persy, that was an experience I never, never could 
 forget ! Why, the very reason I have had so many beaux 
 has been because I did not dare, remembering my wild 
 delusion of being engaged to Carroll De Lancey, to receive 
 the exclusive attentions of one. It is going with one alone 
 which really draws you into sentimentalities before you 
 know ; whereas, when you have many beaux, you just talk 
 nonsense to them all round, which does not lead to any 
 thing serious at all. 
 
 " No, aunt Persy, I have never had serious relations with 
 beaux except that once, nor ever allowed any young man 
 to behave to me as a favored lover does, except just Car 
 roll De Lancey. But if I tell Mr. Leigh about him now, 
 and he happens to remeniber all those young men who 
 were here to see me Tvhen lie mt came to this house, will 
 it not seem to him as if 1 nay* 1 . Decu giving my heart away 
 piecemeal all along, a? if I have been tily a great flirt, 
 and began very improperly young indeed i engaged when 
 
 1 was a school-girl. How can I bear for him to have such 
 an idea of me? " wailed Monny afresh. 
 
 ki O aunt Persy! " she broke out anew, "of ccnise ti 
 
A KEVEKEND IDOL. 831 
 
 would never, never be right for me to marry a minister, 
 if I were not in true sympathy with his life and work. 
 But I o?7i in true sympathy with the kind of minister 
 Mr. Leigh is. If he were like some ministers, strict about 
 trifles, or laying great stress on doctrines, and the neces 
 sity of belonging to his own particular church, why then 
 I could not honestly profess to be a very strong believer 
 of that kind. But I am a strong believer in him and in 
 the everlasting righteousness, which is all. you can think 
 of when you hear him preach. Truly it is the very spirit 
 of that righteousness in himself which makes me adore 
 Mr. Leigh so, and not his great talents. I could not love 
 any man merely because he was talented. I m talented 
 myself," cried the artist-girl. "I mean, I know just 
 what a poor little accidental trifle it is to be talented. 
 To be born with some knack at expressing things on 
 canvas or in books, it is nothing. One may be very 
 rich in those gifts, and yet live a low and ignoble life. 
 Oh ! I saw that when I was in Europe, in the great picture- 
 galleries there ; that there were evil pictures, as well as 
 divine ones ; pictures that it took a world of talent to 
 paint, and yet which had better never have been painted. 
 It was as if my eyes were opened to see all this by my 
 acquaintance with Carroll De Lancey, which had first 
 brought to me the great dreadful discover} 7 , that this was 
 a world where people could be perfectly beautiful, and yet 
 have no morals. It was such a shock that I could never 
 be dazzled by that kind of beauty any more, or think mere 
 talents and brilliancy any thing to glory in, except as one 
 would be -glad to have any gift to make pictures live, or 
 put words powerful, so as to bear witness to the truth. 
 
 "I never, nei er imagined," the impassioned girl went 
 on, "that just the kind of seer of the truth whom I 
 should fall in love with would be a minister. But it is 
 
832 A REVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 BO ; arid I do want Mr. Leigh to know that the things he 
 spends his life for, the things which have to do with char 
 acter and conduct, are what I, too, set higher than any 
 thing else in this world. And how can he believe that, if 
 he thinks I have been of light conduct myself? Why, I 
 suppose that even the least strict people, if they knew of 
 that Southern journey of mine, would cry out> What a 
 shocking thing ! That great preacher is going to marry 
 a wild girl who played bold pranks when she went to 
 school ! I never did," protested Monny, and most truly. 
 44 It is not a true piece out of my life : 1 mean it is not 
 like any of the rest of it, my running away to New 
 Orleans in boy s clothes." 
 
 44 No, dear," replied the matron soothingly, as the g: i 
 drew breath for a moment in her impulsive outpourings ; 
 44 and nobody but perfect strangers to you, who never even 
 saw your face in their lives, would call you a bold girl." 
 
 k4 But I don t like even perfect strangers to be able to 
 think any thing amiss of Mr. Leigh s wife. You know the 
 least ill report about a minister, or anybody that belongs 
 to him, how it stains, how it stains!" cried the girl. 
 " And I cannot bear to tell even Mr. Leigh himself just 
 this one kind of story. I mean, I should not be afraid to 
 tell him, he is so generous to me, any most foolish, foolish 
 little thing I had ever done that troubled me, if only it 
 was not just in the line of those things, the things which 
 have to do with modesty. You know, aunt Persy, in 
 those things it seems unpardonable for a woman to make 
 even a mistake : the bare shadow of wrong-doing offenda 
 like the substance." 
 
 44 Yes," rejoined the Puritan matron, 44 the world 
 reckons, and rightly, that, between the women who do bad 
 things and the women who are given to dancing on the 
 edges of badness, there s no great difference : modesty 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 333 
 
 is alike gone from both of em. So I don t blame you 
 for disliking to stand, even for a moment, in the eyes of 
 the man you are to marry, as among the careless-behaved 
 girls." 
 
 * It will look as if I must have been such a girl to have 
 travelled a thousand miles dressed up first as a boy. nd 
 then pretending to be a wife, when I was not married. 
 () aunt Persy ! how will such behaviors look?" And with 
 this word so often and distressfully repeated, the girl 
 ended her long tale, and, leaning her round arms on the 
 table before her, looked into the elder eyes with anxious 
 longing to have her policy of concealment seconded. 
 
 It should be remembered, we think, when women are 
 accused of being the concealing sex, that frankness about 
 their mistakes is generally far more costly to them than to 
 men, not only because of woman s greater sensitiveness 
 to blame from those she loves, but because, while it is 
 sufficient, as a rule, for a man to be right, a woman s ways 
 must not only be right, they must look right. 
 
 The Cape-Cod widow, being a woman, shared Money s 
 own sense of the feminine relation to mere appearances ; 
 and she answered slowly, " I don t know that there s any 
 clear call of duty for you to tell Mr. Leigh just now all 
 this strange-sounding story. When you re a married wife, 
 my dear, if it still burdens your mind as something you 
 ought to tell him, twould come a great deal easier to you 
 to speak to him about it then ; but till then I d let it 
 all drop, seeing you are sure that your heart is no less 
 whole towards the man you are going to marry, because 
 of that old affair." 
 
 "Indeed I am. I love Mr. Leigh not less, but always 
 more, because of my memory of Carroll De Lancey, and 
 the shocking disappointment he was to me." 
 
 tk I v* no doubt of it," said aunt Persy ; " and so there 
 
334 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 seems to be no reason of the inward state why you ve any 
 thing to confess to Mr. Leigh, mere outside actions, 
 that you were led into, not of your own will, and which 
 happened so long ago, I see no reason of conscience for 
 you to speak of while it is so trying to your feelings : 
 and Y J , just go to bed and to sleep, my dear, and forget 
 all al/uut it," concluded aunt Persy. 
 
 It will be seen that both Monny and her elderly advisei 
 had all the feminine reverence for truths, but not the 
 masculine respect for facts. Women, in general, incline 
 to attach a prime importance to intentions, "the inward 
 state," as aunt Persy had it ; while men do to the out 
 ward act. That is, something in the whole course of 
 men s lives, in their larger dealing with the world of 
 affairs, seems to teach them far more forcibly than it does 
 women, that deeds are always more serious than intentions, 
 for this momentous reason, that any thing which has once 
 taken shape in action is always likely to trail some con 
 sequences after it, which, sooner or later, will turn up and 
 have to be met. Notably was this proved true in poor 
 Monny s girlish engagement, and all the tangled adven 
 tures which had grown out of it : five years had that affair 
 lain dead, and no living soul had stirred the embers there 
 of ; yet it was all there, ready to be blown up into a most 
 burning scandal by an enemy. 
 
 This tendency of women, by the way, to exalt the spirit 
 above the letter, is a great spiritualizing force, we think, 
 in life and society, a help to that perpetual re-asserting 
 of the vital quality of things which the world always needs. 
 But, applied to the conduct of affairs, would not this femi 
 nine virtue tend to become a peculiar vice of disorder? 
 Would it be wholly fanciful, for instance, to cite Miss 
 Kate De Lancey, with her reasoning that all means were 
 right to secure Gen. Warwick s property to her brother 
 
A REVKKEND IDOL. 835 
 
 apd herself, because in his heart he wanted them for hig 
 heiis, to cite this young woman aa having merely carried 
 out to some daring extreme the feminine doctrine of the 
 44 inwardness of things " ? This girl and her brother were 
 two of those uprooted and unguided young lives which 
 are among the heaviest damages of every civil war ; but, 
 of the two, the girl had grown up by fur the least damaged, 
 by far the superior moral being. Yet she did, without 
 a qualm of conscience, what nothing would have induced 
 her wild young brother to do. He would not swear a 
 promise, even to a half-crazed old man, which he had no 
 intention of performing. Drunk or sober, he would not 
 trifle with his word. He considered it the characteristic 
 of low-born knaves to lie ; and, whether his scruples had 
 their root in pride or principle, the practical result was 
 the same, since his integrity was quite unshakable. 
 
 His sister well knew this, and had contrived her plot ac 
 cordingly, making it impossible for him to undo any thing 
 she had done, save by exposing a lady, and she his own 
 sister ; that is, the one earthly device by which to tie up 
 his "pragmatic" sense of honor, her ingenious wits had 
 hit on, she had tied it up with her own. Now, the girl 
 was not false-natured ; but she had none of her brother s 
 instinctive sense that to tamper even with the formulas of 
 bonds and contracts strikes at law and order. Indeed, 
 that law and order have been hardly won, and won by 
 fighting, and that, if lost, they must be fought for again 
 and by one sex, this feeling seems sufficiently to pene 
 trate the whole fighting sex to make a man, when ne has 
 >my conscience at all, apt to show some conscience in 
 the direction of those principles which underlie law and 
 order. The feminine conscientiousness is prone to be 
 keener in some other directions ; and hence, we fancy, 
 arises that charge so often brought by men against 
 
336 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 women, of being lawless in any thing like business deal 
 ings ; the charge, also, that, whenever women have bad 
 political influence, they have shown a political immorality 
 and unscrupulousness quite beyond that of men. Now, 
 that women are the less scrupulous sex in questions of 
 pure right what they apprehend as pure right certainly 
 cannot be true : they made the most heroic of martyrs in 
 the da} 7 s of religious martyrdom : they have always been 
 ready to die for love or religion ; that is, for a person or 
 a principle, any principle which really commanded the 
 allegiance of their souls. But the principles on which 
 governments are carried on probably very seldom do so 
 command their allegiance ; for in the practical world pure 
 right never obtains, only a very mixed right indeed. And 
 women being most keenly alive to all this alloy of im - 
 perfection in the best systems for establishing human 
 justice, and not realizing, as men do, that these imperfect 
 systems are yet the sole barriers against chaos and mis 
 rule, probably somewhat naturally incline to the dangerous 
 liberty of making private interpretations, of setting 
 aside codes and formulas in the interest of some higher 
 truth which they seek to establish ; to, in short, what 
 scoffers would call the politics of priests and women. 
 
 It is not necessary to be a scoffer to be either in the 
 ignoble attitude of beings who undervalue their own sex, 
 or the ungenerous attitude of those who undervalue the 
 other to see that there may be some grounds for the con 
 servative apprehension, that in politics the better woman 
 might often be a more mischievous agent than the worse 
 man. 
 
A BEVEREND IDOL. 887 
 
 CHAPTER XXH. 
 
 "OKFORE Mr. Leigh s return to the Cape at this time, 
 .L/ he took occasion to present himself to the Slabwells 
 to ask his wife in due form of her guardians. They 
 were finishing the out-of-town season with a few quiet 
 weeks among the Berkshire hills, and there the suitor 
 called on them. When Mr. Slab well had somewhat re 
 covered from his amaze at the idea of Monny s choosing 
 a clergyman, he found points in the proposed alliance 
 that were profoundly satisfying. Morals and money lie 
 regarded as the two indispensable pins of a human exist- 
 ( nee : which of the two he considered the most essen 
 tial, it might be difficult to say, so absolutely fatal a lack 
 he found in the life that wanted either. And certainly a 
 man who was at once a minister, and the possessor of an 
 independent fortune, presented such a conjunction of 
 these two prime human values as might be called miracu 
 lous. Also, the devoted husband reflected that this gen 
 tleman of old family would be a nephew-in-law sure to 
 please his lady- wife. Mr. Slabwell s own respect for old 
 families, as we have before implied, was strictly limited 
 to the female sex. No aristocrat on earth could surpass 
 him in reverence for a born lady ; but the only born gen 
 tleman that he had ever stood in the slightest awe of was 
 the paternal Mr. "Rivers, when he went to ask him for the 
 treasure of his daughter. And as for Mr. Leigh, uncle 
 John considered it decidedly that gentleman s place at 
 present to stand in awe of him. And so he did. Seri- 
 
338 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 ously, the suitor s claims to ask for such a rare girl as 
 his wife s niece were so thoroughly examined by Mr. 
 Slabwell as to assure Mr. Leigh that his darling had grown 
 up under the stoutest of masculine protection ; and alto 
 gether the famous clergyman, and the undevout but very 
 upright Mr. Slabwell, acquired, in the course of their 
 transactions, quite a strong mutual respect. Aunt Helen, 
 who was really of Monny s blood, naturally pleased Mr. 
 Leigh still more, a liking which was fully reciprocat 
 ed by the lady. Thus Mr. Leigh was indorsed by the 
 Slabwells ; and appreciating on his own side all that 
 Monny s guardians were, and finding, in all that they 
 were not, only a new cause of tenderness towards the 
 young orphan who in her deepest life had grown so alone 
 and apart, he returned to the Cape having fulfilled the 
 other engagements which had taken him away at this 
 time at the end of a three-days absence. 
 
 He came by that same early evening-train which had 
 brought him so often ; and a high tea awaited him, which, 
 this time, was probably a truly exalted meal, as Monny 
 graced the board, with no hints of running away ; and, 
 after the repast, the two went out for a pleasure in which 
 they had never indulged before, a walk together down 
 to the beach. 
 
 It was a singularly soft, still evening for this region. 
 The wild gales which blow about the equinox yet waited ; 
 and even by the ocean, whose opposite bank was the 
 shore of another continent, even over this mighty 
 thoroughfare of winds, no breeze to-night seemed arriv 
 ing. Calm sea and sky were all alight with the ineffable 
 glory of a September moon shining at its full ; and the 
 long waves, falling farther and farther away with the out 
 going tide, made only a tranquil cadence to the varying 
 voices of the man and maiden as they came down the 
 high bank to the beach. 
 
A BEVEREND IDOL. 889 
 
 4 Here seems a good place to rest," said Mr. Leigh, 
 leading the way to a certain spot on the beach which 
 lured him to-night with an especial fancy. It was a great 
 rcc ; , half buried in the sand ; and Monny, whose memory 
 at the moment was less alert than his, sat down, unaware 
 of any thing peculiar in the place, until Mr. Leigh 
 added, 
 
 44 From this rock a certain young lady, inspirited by an 
 extremely early breakfast and an exciting dog-race, first 
 gave me a piece of her remarkable mind." 
 
 44 Oh ! " cried Monny in sudden horrified remembrance 
 of the place and that matutinal dialogue which had opened 
 her acquaintance with Mr. Leigh. " What did you think 
 of me that morning? " 
 
 44 I thought," said the minister conscientiously, "that 
 you were very pretty and amusing." 
 
 44 And after?" softly asked the girl, as her lover sat 
 down on the rock beside her. 
 
 44 That you were always more and more pretty and 
 amusing." 
 
 44 And after? " still repeated the wistful voice. 
 
 44 And after, ever after, O my darling! what have I 
 had to do but to be ashamed and ashamed that I once 
 thought you only pretty and amusing?" 
 
 41 Truly, I mean to be more than that," whispered the 
 eager girl. "I wish to be all, all, that I should be. I 
 have thought about this a great deal since you have been 
 away. I have been reading the Prayer-Book, over in 
 the last part, the Appendix, I mean, where there are 
 rules for the ordering of priests and things. I found 
 something domestic there, an order about the manners 
 of them that specially pertain to ministers, their house 
 holds. I am charged to be a wholesome example and 
 pattern, " quoted Monny, from her researches in the 
 Prayer-Book Appendix. 
 
340 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 44 No, little dissenter," laughed the minister softly, as 
 the rueful, solemn accent with which Monny made her 
 personal application of the Church orders was bewitching 
 in his ear : you are not quite up in the Prayer-Book yet. 
 The charge is to me. I am to make you a wholesome 
 example and pattern, as much as in me lieth. The 
 Church is very reasonable, you see, does not ask any 
 impossibilities, only some decent endeavor on the part of 
 the clergyman to make his wife behave." 
 
 He spoke playfully, anxious to dispel any unduly for 
 midable notion of the responsibilities of a minister s wife 
 which might be oppressing the young girl beside him ; but 
 his lightsome answer had a word in it which started into 
 such painful memory her New-Orleans escapade, Monny 
 took it up quickly, 
 
 " To behave has always been my wish and my habit 
 I hope ; that is usually. Truly, as a general rule, I 
 do not think I have been given to wild and strange con 
 duct. But sometimes, in the press of very peculiar cir 
 cumstances, one may do things not like one s real self, 
 things which should not be taken as true samples of one s 
 character. Do you not think so? That morning when 
 1 talked to you so here (I have forgotten what words I 
 said ; but I am sure they were dreadful impudence) , you 
 do not believe it had been my usual style to lecture 
 strange gentlemen with that awful boldness, do you?" 
 
 " Blessed child ! it was the most unmistakable style in 
 all the world, never, never, the style of a bold girl," the 
 lover hastened to reply to the tremulous pleading that 
 was in Monny s voice. Why, darling, I had a fancy 
 wO come here to-night just because I loved you then, and 
 always, alwa3 r s from that morning. And what man could 
 ever love a bold girl ? said the simple wooer. 
 
 Again*a word which struck sharply on that trembling 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 341 
 
 inner consciousness of the girl. She did not speak ; but 
 her lover discerned by the moonlight some expression 
 in her face which made him say quickly, " Dearest, what 
 is the matter? Let us go away from this place, if it is 
 painful to you." 
 
 " No, I Jike this place," said Monny, controlling herself. 
 " It is kirger out of doors, it is very large to-night, the 
 sea and the sky." She was feeling as if the shining 
 immensities that she looked on might widen her vision of 
 what her duty was as to telling her lover that secret ; for 
 the calm decision not to tell him, which she had been able 
 to come to in his absence, was singularly shaken by his 
 return, his very presence so moved her to confidence. 
 Still she trembled to speak. 
 
 Meanwhile the lover rejoined, to the maiden s last words, 
 41 Not larger than my confidence, my delight, in you, 
 darling, just as you are : yonder ocean is not more bound 
 less than that trust and joy. This doom of 4 specially 
 pertaining to a minister, he went on, improving the 
 phrase which Monny had fished out of the Prayer-Book to 
 put the arm of a proprietor (an extremely covetous one) 
 around the maid as he spoke, consider it not so deeply. 
 You must not fancy that the change in your name is going 
 to necessitate any mighty change otherwise." 
 
 "Oh! there are many changes I shall expect, I shall 
 wish, to make," said Monny, readily lured away from the 
 dis ^rbing subject she was secretly struggling with, to 
 talk of easier things connected with her future relations. 
 "Balls and such gayeties I shall be so glad to give up: 
 for I was getting very tired of them even before before; 
 I knew you, Mr. Leigh. Not that I thought it wicked to 
 dance ; for I have not been brought up to think that way, 
 and I took immense pleasure in dancing when I first came 
 out. But that kind of pleasure lasts such a little while : 
 
B42 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 once you have been through the whole round of 
 fashionable amusements, it is much the same thing over 
 again, and leaves such a sense of emptiness as work does 
 not, because that is never quite the same thing over again. 
 And my work, too : I shall be willing to change all that 
 now to give up art. 
 
 "You give up art? What an inconceivable idea!" 
 ejaculated the astonished man, as Monny reached this 
 point in her offerings. 
 
 " Surely," said the girl earnestly, " all the daily hours 
 I spend now in painting pictures will make a great deal of 
 time to help you. Can I not do something about your 
 sermons? copy them, I mean." 
 
 44 Precious martyr," laughed Mr. Leigh: "there are 
 two difficulties in the way of the immolation you propose. 
 First, I have never yet kept a private secretary ; second, 
 when I do come to that need, I think I can find some 
 proficient in the art of penmanship whom I can sacrifice 
 to my sermons at a less monstrous waste and misuse than 
 there would be in making a mere scribe of a being whom 
 Heaven made an artist, and who has done her heroic best 
 to improve the gift of Heaven. Ana," he continued 
 seriously, " it has seemed possible to me, it has been my 
 hope, that, in the life which you have promised to live with 
 me, there might, in the long-run, be fewer obstructions to 
 your study of art at least, not more than those which 
 have been in your past life, and which you have so mar 
 vellously overcome. I certainly know women of society 
 whose homes are in nowise neglected, and who yet keep 
 up such a constant round of what may be called outside 
 duties and pleasures as must consume a very large part of 
 every day. And since Ana cares so little for the pleas 
 ures of these ladies, for the sugar-plums, and cat s- 
 cradles, Compliments, cards, and custard which rack the 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 343 
 
 wit of all society ; and since she is certainly excused from 
 their duties, having been born to this especial duty of her 
 own of art, I cannot see why this great desideratum of 
 time for her pursuits may not, one year with another, be 
 secured to her. It surely cannot be a wild calculation to 
 hope for this, since I reckon, you see, quite from the 
 standard of the average woman, even the fashionable 
 variety of her who is not usually considered the most 
 energetic of her sex. And have I not seen how infinitely 
 more than the average energy has one young girl in gath 
 ering up the hours ? " 
 
 " Oh ! I have always had to gather them up in order to 
 do any thing at all in art ; especially since I have been a 
 young lady, after I left school and came out, I mean. 
 I had supposed that my time was going to be wholly my 
 own then ; and I was very much disappointed and troubled 
 to find that it was less my own than ever before in my 
 life : all the day seemed to be so frittered away, and 
 utterly spoilt for work, by mere social demands. And 
 although, at last, I succeeded in reserving to myself some 
 regular morning hours to paint in, I had to do it by 
 dropping the whole business of making and receiving 
 formal calls, and ignoring so many other observances of 
 society as made me, I knew, an anxiety to aunt Helen. 
 And then the thought that I was discomforting her would 
 be such a weight on my feelings, that often, when I shut 
 myself up to paint, I could hardly do any thing at all ; for 
 you know you need to have your heart at ease before you 
 can put your mind well to your work," said soft-hearted 
 Monny. u And I tell you all this, not to complain of the 
 home which has been my only home for so long," contin 
 ued the orphan ; "for aunt Helen has always been kind to 
 me, and most careful for my good (according to her own 
 ideas) , and uncle John as generous as possible, and always 
 
344 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 interceding for me to have my own way. But what I 
 wanted to say was, that no hinderances which I could have 
 in in a new home, would be any hinderance to me at all, 
 where I had the strange new help of somebody who did 
 not merely tolerate my pursuits, as my guardians have 
 done, but who really believed in and strongly appro vod 
 of them. Oh, if you truly wish for me to keep on in art, 
 I cannot think what kind of heaven it would be to work 
 with such a help as that always !" (Tender demonstra 
 tions from the lover here somewhat interrupt the outflow 
 of girlish confidences. It is resumed, however, with 
 another anxious inquiry from the maiden) , 
 
 "And will not the people your parish, dislike my 
 being an artist? " 
 
 . "Dislike your genius! I should think not," replied 
 the lover proudly. " Why, when once you have exhibited 
 your pictures, I expect to be known thereafter only as the 
 husband of Mrs. Leigh. As the dearest earthly ambition 
 I have ever had has been to wear that title, I shall natu 
 rally like to hear it repeated as often as possible." 
 
 " Seriously," returned the girl to these flatteries of the 
 famous man, to whose face her own was so wistfully up 
 turned, "there will be an idea, you know, that an artist 
 will be both undomestic, and inefficient in parish duties." 
 
 " Seriously, my dear child, who on earth will the do 
 mestic business concern save our two selves ? And even 
 the most inexperienced mortal can discern one thing about 
 this great domestic question ; viz., that it is very largely 
 indeed a question of finance. I mean that it is perfectly 
 idle to say that the mistress of a house cannot safely and 
 rightly delegate an immense proportion of all her cares, if 
 she has no necessity to count the money-cost of thus re 
 lieving herself. Thanks to my fathers, money-necessities, 
 which hamper all their days so many better men, have not 
 
A EEVEREND IDOL. 345 
 
 touched my life : I trust they may never come near yours. 
 Fortune does permit us, my dear, to arrange our estab 
 lishment in the way most favorable to the ends we both 
 value most, and still to have something to spare for 
 others. We can the more readily provide for all this, 
 because neither of us care for great show and maguiji- 
 cenee." 
 
 " Indeed I do not : indeed I would like to be poor with 
 you, Mr. Leigh, to live on very, very small means indeed. 
 You would see what a manager I would develop into 
 then," said Monny, not without some warrant for this 
 little boast. u I could dress why, I could dress entirely 
 out of your old surplices," exclaimed the girl merrily. 
 44 The white robes and the black ones, they would keep 
 me in toilets all the year round, and such riches of yards 
 as would be in them for trains! With those mighty 
 remnants to fall back on for clothes, I would so fix myself 
 out as to be a perfect credit to you on the smallest 
 of incomes. How big do you look in your preaching 
 gowns?" asked Monny, who had never yet seen her 
 gigantic lover magnified by those flowing habiliments, her 
 light way of referring to which must be pardoned to 
 her Puritan blood : she was not to the manner born. 
 
 This churchman s sense of the seriousness of his call 
 ing did not reside in his gown ; and he met the girl s little 
 sally with the laughing reply, 44 Big enough, I hope, to 
 suggest to the young person who was referring just now, 
 in rather an alarming tone, to her parish duties, that I may 
 not stand too ambitious encroachments on what I had 
 fancied to be my own peculiar sphere. 
 
 u Seriously again, Ana, this is a reasonable world, much 
 more reasonable, on the whole, than it has the credit of 
 being. When it sees man or woman truly devoted and 
 effective in any one work, it does not ask that such a 
 
346 A KEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 worker shall equally attend to all other works. My par 
 ish has, I hope, the average rationality : be altogether 
 sure, my darling, that you can trust it never to ask a girl 
 whose patient, wonderful young years have wrought what 
 yours have to be any more efficient than she is." 
 
 " ; Of course, I shall be most glad to help in the church 
 charities, looking after the poor, I have always tried 
 to do that a little." 
 
 " Have I not seen it? " said the minister. 
 
 4 And any thing in this world that I can do to be use 
 ful to you, if they are things that I have not cared about 
 before, I shall care for now. I have read," Monny went 
 on with naive earnestness, u that the wives of great men 
 those of them who were fortunate in their wives 
 enabled the men to be much greater by supplementing all 
 their labors, sparing them the drudgery of their tasks ; 
 that even the wives of scientific men have learned to be 
 thus helpful. It seems there have been many of these 
 women. I was reading this summer about Dr. Priestley, 
 who discovered dephlogisticated air, I believe it was, 
 made a great many investigations in airs, the reviewer 
 said, which were of immense importance to science. And 
 he said that Dr. Priestley was able to accomplish such 
 great things because he had a remarkably capable wife, 
 who relieved him from all earthly cares. And I read, too, 
 that it was through another devoted wife that animal mag 
 netism was discovered ; that some scientific man, experi 
 menting one day with a live frog, happened to put him 
 down near something that was electrized, and the watch 
 ful wife observed how its leg twitched poor little frog ! " 
 Mouny exclaimed with involuntary lament, in the midst of 
 her gravely-delivered scraps of biography. 
 
 11 1 think so ! " Mr. Leigh laughed aloud at the abrupt 
 termination of Monny s solemn quotations, " a pair of 
 
A REVEKEXD IDOL. 847 
 
 them to torment him, decidedly a family of cnielists for 
 Bergh to look after ! 
 
 4 It is conclusively settled now," declared the lover, 
 44 that I am not a great man ; for I am everlastingly cer 
 tain that I do not want a supplementary wife. Mrs. 
 Priestley especially, I am bound as a churchman to object 
 to. Some of her husband s mischievous activity might 
 hare been curtailed, perhaps, if she had been a less capa 
 ble woman. The frogman s wife I will not pronounce 
 on ; but surely I cannot indorse a woman who contributed 
 to the enlargement of such a schismatic as the Rev. Dr. 
 Priestley." 
 
 44 Reverend? I did not know that he was a minister," 
 mui mured Monny. 
 
 "Certainly, he diffused rather more dephlogisticated 
 air in the domain of theology than anywhere else," said 
 Mr. Leigh. 
 
 4t I remember now," rejoined the girl, 4 that he was 
 some kind of religious come-outer, to begin with. But I 
 read about him in 4 The Popular Science Monthly ; and 
 all that remained in my mind was his scientific discoveries, 
 and how the reviewer extolled Mrs. Priestley as a model 
 wife. He said that all efforts of her own would undoubt 
 edly have been miserably weak and worthless, if she had 
 aspired to any original research, like the vainly ambitious 
 women of to-day ; whereas, by making herself an adjunct 
 to her husband s labors, she was instrumental in the ac 
 complishing of truly great things. And I remember the 
 reviewer wound up by saying, Honor to the wives of that 
 type, in away which so seemed to say, 4 Dishonor to those 
 who attempt to do any thing of themselves, it discour 
 aged me dreadfully about painting pictures." 
 
 44 Dear child," replied the lover, who had listened, fas 
 cinated by the mere music of the pensive tone in which 
 
348 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Monny bewailed herself over " The Popular Science 
 Monthly," "old Dr. Johnson ought to be forever alive to 
 say to every mortal man of us, your afflicting reviewer 
 with the rest, My dear sir, endeavor to clear your mind 
 of cant. We must all live by cant sometimes, the 
 shallow generality, the idle hearsay, we must follow 
 these in many perplexed things until the true light dawn. 
 But when that comes, when a man has had the illumina 
 tion which I have had in you, my wonderful Ana, he must 
 be an extraordinary bigot and blockhead to have any ear 
 for the old cant afterwards. As to the general subject 
 of woman s rights, I suspect there is plenty of cant on 
 both sides of it : my tastes, I suppose, have been conserva 
 tive on the general question. But it is a question that I 
 do not pretend to have studied, and I see no need to study 
 it now to settle any general questions in order to decidi 
 that it is your particular right to be an artist." 
 
 " I know, I know that you will be most generous to me 
 if I go on in art ; and it has been very good of you to jest 
 about the useful wives, and say that you will be content if 
 I am not one of them. But I want to be one of them, 
 to be the very, very average woman indeed, in the sense 
 of living all my life for your sake," said the girl, voicing 
 a passion which was so infinitely deeper in her than the 
 artist s, no reviewers were needed to stimulate it. "If I 
 could be the greatest artist that ever was, it would never 
 console me, if I thought that I missed thereby the chance 
 of lightening } T our special burdens a little : it is something 
 I cannot bear to miss, the hope of being some near and 
 personal help to you which nobody else is." 
 
 "My own beloved," said the man solemnly, for the 
 giii s words had touched deep chords, "really to bear 
 another s burden is not in our mortal power. But to keep 
 another happy and in good heart while he bears his burden 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 349 
 
 himself, that is bve s gift, and it is the divinest gift on 
 earth. That gift, that help, you are to me in a degree 
 beyond all words to utter, a help indeed which none 
 other is, or ever was, or I had imagined ever could be. 
 
 44 And see now," he went on more lightly, " what cant 
 beyond all other cants it is to talk of the model wife as 
 if she were some stereotype pattern, warranted to suit the 
 universal man ; when I, for instance, should fiM your 
 reviewer s model wife, whose husband must provide all 
 her work or her play, the most formidable lady that I 
 could possibly take on my hands. For there are no frogs 
 to watch in my study ; and how could I supply her with 
 my drudgeries, when I have always been mysteriously 
 unable to do any work well, if I tried to cut out and 
 shirk the drudgeries thereof? And, perhaps because I 
 have lived too long alone, I must confess that I should 
 not want the most admirable supplementary lady in the 
 world to be talking to me, even about the Sunday schools 
 and the charities, at all times and seasons. Behold what a 
 miserably unfit husband I should be for the perfect wife ! 
 But the imperfect one, the abnormal woman, the genius," 
 he said teasingly, " I have the singularity to think that I 
 might possibly manage with her. When she was revealed 
 to me one marvellous morning, I began to whisper to 
 myself, 4 1 could forage for this mate. Some of its natu 
 ral wants are known to me. It were good for it to have 
 its bread and water sure, and with no turmoil of their 
 getting ; and for that Heaven has enabled me to provide. 
 It would choose regular habits : so do I. It will wish to 
 spend ncuch solitary time at its work ; rryn. wlK i 1 shut 
 myself up alone to study, it will not feel itself wronged 
 and neglected. Ah, this bird of the empyrean, thought 
 I, * rare and strange as it is, if 1 could win it to be my 
 home-bird, there would be this enormous basis of hope 
 
350 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 for future happiness, that so many of its wants and waya 
 are in my line of wants and ways. This unnatural girl, 
 with a pursuit of her own, I said, is the one feminine 
 being who would not be wholly an enigma to me. 
 
 Thus spoke the man to whom a being who should fill 
 all life s large spaces of thought and endeavor with only 
 the fondnesses of the heart, however fond, with the mere 
 ebb and flow of emotion, however pure, to whom such 
 a being, let it be confessed of Kenyon Leigh, would have 
 been, however fascinating for a little time, at last utterly 
 wearisome and exhausting. 
 
 " O my darling, my darling ! " protested the lover anew, 
 "I always loved you, alwa} T s wanted you for my wife: 
 not to long for you was impossible. But when I thought 
 you were what these doctrinaires of yours would call 
 the normal young maiden, in the sense of your having no 
 special occupation but to be charming (although Heaven 
 knows you were too charming to me for me to pass any 
 severe criticisms on your office in the world) , was I not 
 forced to think that such powers of charming must needs 
 pine for a gayer atmosphere than was permitted to a 
 work-bound life like mine ? And now, my own Ana, that 
 I know you as you really are, all the deep sources from 
 which your young brightness was fed, do you ask if I am 
 content with you, glad in your great gifts, in the expecta 
 tion that you will cultivate them through life? Dearest, 
 believe me, you are all in all so absolutely what I would 
 have you, that if I had ever dared to dream of such a 
 possible wife, of a joy so perfect in this world of ours 
 where perfect joys are so seldom found, great satisfac 
 tions for great desires, I should have thought myself aa 
 wild as Greek Endymion, maddening for the moon." 
 
 Solemnly, as all deep feeling speaks, these words were 
 spoken ; and it would seem that they might quiet even the 
 
A REVEKEND IDOL. 351 
 
 fluttering young heart that heard them with an eternal 
 re-assurance. 
 
 Apparently it was so for a little. When the thrilling 
 silence which held the lovers for a moment was again 
 broken, it was by the voice of the girl, saying in a tone 
 low and gravely sweet, 
 
 4t> I do believe you, Mr. Leigh, that you wish me to go 
 on with my work. And be very sure indeed," continued 
 the earnest maiden, " that mine is not a kind of work 
 that will ever in the least have to be considered beside 
 yours, with reference to interruptions, I mean. Inter 
 ruptions will be comparatively of no importance to me, 
 because, if I lose one day, I can paint another ; whereas 
 I understand very well that a man s work can never be 
 put off in that way. Because almost all the work that 
 men are engaged in men who are in what is called active 
 life has this necessity, that it must absolutely be done 
 within a fixed time : when the hour strikes, the minister 
 must be ready with his sermon, the lawyer with his brief, 
 and so on. That is one reason why the women s-rights 
 people seem to me very wild indeed when they urge that 
 women can practise professions just as men do. For of 
 course it would be a very strange kind of home, it would 
 be no home at all, where both the master and the mistress 
 were driven by avocations that could not be interrupted. 
 It is certain, that, if one had this necessity to have his 
 working- time kept sacred, there must be the other to 
 guard it." 
 
 The man who was to be " guarded " listened in charmed 
 silence to all this grave discoursing of Miss Moimy. The 
 way in -which this very emotional and imaginative girl yet 
 betrayed her descent from the much-arguing Puritans by 
 her earnestness 10 be logically right on the most every-day 
 matters, this little debating fashion of Monny s speech, 
 
352 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 peipetually fascinated Mr. Leigh, albeit there was often a 
 touch of amusement in the mood with which he listened. 
 Just now he smiled only an inward smile as he looked 
 down on his young protector to ask when and where she 
 had made such an exhaustive study of the whole duty of 
 woman. 
 
 "This summer/ she answered with all seriousness, 
 1 have read a good deal about woman s sphere. Dr. 
 Priestley seemed to be in the magazines apropos of some 
 celebration. The centennial of his birth has come round 
 lately, has it not?" 
 
 " That came round, my dear, between forty and fifty 
 years ago," replied Mr. Leigh. "But there has been a 
 statue erected to him in England lately : that is what you 
 have seen notices of." 
 
 "I suppose so," said Monny, who had taken no pro 
 found interest in Dr. Priestley or his birthdays, save as 
 his domestic life had furnished a text for preachment* 
 on the model woman. "So many centennials are being 
 celebrated just now," she added, half in excuse of her 
 inattentive memory, "America s next year, and this 
 year Michael Angelo s fourth centennial." 
 
 It was the merest chance which had brought the great 
 sculptor s name to Monny s lips ; but it was a chance 
 fated to give a particular turn to her thoughts. Michael 
 Angelo had been an especial god with this artist-girl. 
 She adored his character as well as his genius. And 
 now, as his name dropped accidentally from her lips, it 
 crossed her young fancy that there was some likeness 
 between the great master who had so long dominated her 
 ideal woild and the man beside her, although the latter 
 had never handled any implements of the former s art. 
 Men are allied quite as much through the greatness of 
 their qualities as through any similarity of their mere 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 353 
 
 talents ; and the spirit, at once fiery and austere, of the 
 great sculptor, writing on his immortal statue, " Sweet is 
 sleep, and sweeter yet is it to be of stone while misery 
 and wrong endure," this spirit, in its strong hatred of 
 the evil, and passion for the good, might well seem repro 
 duced in Keuyon Leigh to the girl who loved him. Cer 
 tain it was that at this moment her fond imagination 
 spanned the centuries to compare her lover to the immor 
 tal artist, so many of whose words are as memorable as 
 his statues. And Monny s thoughts eould not make this 
 comparison to-night without remembering Michael An- 
 gelo s love for Vittoria Colouna. Nor could she recall 
 just now the Marchioness of Peseara, the mature, gifted 
 woman, the widow, lovely in her ripe years, without 
 thinking of Mrs. Van Cortlaudt. Yes, there flew back 
 to her now on the wings of all these wandering fancies 
 her first impression of that beautiful woman as she stood 
 beside Mr. Leigh in the church-entry, her sense of the 
 wondrous way in which the pair graced each other. Now, 
 as then, any jealous thought was impossible to her of the 
 widow. But her original feeling about Mrs. .Van Cort- 
 landt as the resplendent type of all the fair women Mr. 
 Leigh had known before herself, came back to her now 
 with such a renewal of the thrilling wonder that she could 
 be preferred to such, she lifted her face to her lover s, 
 with the bashful, slow-dropping- words, "Have you never 
 cared for loved any woman before me ? " 
 
 "Never!" The answer came so full and strong, the 
 girl forgot every thing else to respond, " Nor I. I have 
 never truly cared for any man in this world before. Little 
 fancies I have had those ; but they are not love are 
 not worthy to be called so. Are they ? " pleaded the girl 
 with a passionate eagerness which overbore all timidity ; 
 for Mrs. Van Cortlandt had suddenly dropped into the 
 
354 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 sea, and the image which rose on "Monny now was Carroll 
 De Lancey. 
 
 Never, never! " reiterated the man with a fervor of 
 emphasis, which, on his side too, gathered force from a 
 hidden thought ; for he remembered at this moment his 
 own "little fancy" for Mrs. Van Cortlandt. Here, 
 then, were two most truthful beings, looking into each 
 other s eyes, speaking, one would verily say, heart to 
 Iieart, who were yet keeping back a secret each from the 
 other, a secret of the same nature. There was this 
 difference between them, however, that the man had not 
 the slightest feeling that his secret was any thing that he 
 ought to speak of. He would have considered himself 
 no gentleman if he had mentioned to any being on earth, 
 even the nearest and the dearest, any such inchoate, 
 never-fulfilled views towards a lady as had been his 
 regarding Mrs. Van Cortlandt. The girl, on the other 
 hand, suffered from the fluctuating conviction that she 
 ought to confess. The words she had said, however, had 
 been as pure of all conscious intent to falsify, or even 
 evade the truth, as the man s had. She scarcely knew 
 what she said; for she had spoken from an impulse to 
 quiet within, not to disguise without, that resurgent trou 
 ble, which, whether her wandering thoughts strayed to 
 woman s sphere or to Michael Augelo, lay in wait to seize 
 her. 
 
 It is possible that this trouble might yet have found 
 some outlet in speech to her lover, as she sat beside him 
 on the moonlit shore, had not a familiar sound just here 
 broke in upon all conversation. It was the bark of Duke 
 George coming rapidly nearer, and soon echoing along 
 the edge of the elm above their heads. 
 
 " Somebody must be with him. There must be some 
 thing wanted at the house," said Monny, starting up; 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 355 
 
 and as the dog presently came plunging down the bank, 
 ecstatic at finding the truants, Mr. Leigh s "Halloo!" 
 soon brought a responsive "Hi!" from Susannah; and 
 in a moment or two more her dusky figure showed, out 
 lined against the sky, at the top of the bank. 
 
 " Please, your Honor," she cried, as Mr. Leigh took a 
 few strides upward to hear her message, "de missis hab 
 sent me to say dat word hab jess come to de house dat 
 poor Skipper Benway is gwine fast. An his wife, hear- 
 in dat your Honor hab come home, she send word to 
 know if it be too much trouble for your Honor to come 
 over and speak wid de dyin man once more, at de last." 
 
 The minister could make but one answer to this, and 
 forthwith he led Monny up the bank. "When they had 
 reached its top, the girl said, "You will get there much 
 quicker, you know, by walking straight to the village, 
 across the sand-hills ; and I will go home with Susannah 
 and Duke George." 
 
 Thus, therefore, they parted, Monny going home with 
 the black woman, and Mr. Leigh striking directly across 
 the waste for the cottage to which he had been sum 
 moned. 
 
356 A REVEKEUD IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIH. 
 
 MRS. VAN CORTLANDT was at the cottage before 
 him, making a charitable call, in prophetic antici 
 pation o"f seeing Mr. Leigh, having learned his habit of 
 visiting there. She had brought some flowers with her, 
 ordered express from a Boston greenhouse. The door 
 of the sick-room stood open into the little kitchen, in 
 which latter room Mrs. Van Cortlandt now sat, making a 
 figure which an artist might have painted for a picture of 
 high-born beauty ministering to the lowly. But in fact 
 the lady was a great embarrassment to the lowly. The 
 very flowers she had brought, with their exotic richness 
 and professionally elaborate arrangement, suggested fu 
 neral decorations to poor Mrs. Benway ; and she dreaded 
 to have the eyes of her dying husband turn on them, lest 
 they should seem to him an unkind anticipation of his 
 burial. Moreover, one of those painful contrasts which 
 cannot be softened in the narrow quarters of the poor was 
 present in a frolicsome two-years-old baby, which, having 
 had its long nap indiscreetly late in the day, was running 
 about now with an ecstatic sense of being out of bed at 
 candlelight, and of having much sleep laid up for many 
 hours. The exhilarated baby, in fact, had been so bor 
 rowed and petted by the neighbors during the long sick 
 ness in the house, as to have become a rather demoralized 
 baby in other ways beside its sleeping habits. Thus it 
 would keep informing Mrs. Van Cortlandt that she was 
 making too long a call, by striking at her with hostile 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 357 
 
 little hands, and ordering her to " dow away, dow away ! " 
 with all its infant might. That the grand lady should SP? 
 her child misbehave thus while the parent life was ebbing 
 added some touch of maternal mortification to the poor 
 wife s sharp sorrow ; and altogether Mrs. Van Cortlaudt 
 was not a consoler. 
 
 All the difference which there is between the truly great 
 personality and the merely imposing one was felt when 
 Mr. Leigh came in. Not humiliation, but help, was in his 
 very presence : he even relieved, as it chanced, poor Mrs. 
 Bemvay s soul of those deathly flowers ; for, noting prac 
 tically that their heavy fragrance thickened the air for that 
 laboring breath, he swept them all up with both hands, 
 and carried them out into the kitchen. As it chanced, he 
 set them down there on a low table, where baby, slyly 
 straining on its little tiptoes, reached after them with that 
 grip of the baby-fist which makes up in tenacity what it 
 lacks in comprehensiveness, and, dragging the whole pile 
 of costly blossoms down on the floor, revelled in the deli 
 cious mischief of tearing them all to bits. There would 
 certainly have been loud outcries from the small destroyer, 
 if Mrs. Van Cortlandt had interfered with this pastime, 
 and she did not. No : in the little kitchen whence all 
 others had withdrawn now, she sat silently shredding her 
 bitter thoughts while the babe on the floor shredded the 
 (lowers ; nor was the infant s mind further than hers from 
 the soul that was passing. 
 
 Life, almost to the last, wrestled hard with death in the 
 strong-knit frame of the poor sailor ; and the minister, so 
 powerful to lift the gasping sufferer into more easy atti 
 tudes, and yet more powerful to sustain the parting spirit, 
 did not leave until all was over. It was midnight ere 
 this release came ; and Mr. Leigh then started for home 
 in an a) straction in which he forgot Mrs. Van Cort- 
 
358 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 iaudt. He went a few paces, then suddenly remembered 
 bis manners, and came back to offer his arm to his lady 
 parishioner, who must walk at this late hour to her lodg 
 ings. The proud woman whom he had forgotten, sharply 
 affronted as she felt, had risen to her feet even to go after 
 him ; for she had lingered through all this long waiting- 
 time at the cottage for an opportunity that she would not 
 lot slip to-night, at whatever cost of pride. So, taking 
 the arm of her tardy escort, she went out from the little 
 house. The great moon of the night was riding high in 
 the zenith now ; and no foot was abroad so late, save that 
 of a neighbor who came up the lane to straighten the dead 
 man for his burial. It was so short a walk around the 
 corner, and along the main street, to Capt. Gawthrop s, 
 that, very soon after leaving the cottage, Mrs. Van Cort- 
 landt began, 
 
 There is a trouble on my mind, Mr. Leigh, that I 
 have been wishing to speak to you about." 
 
 " Shall I call on you to-morrow?" replied the clergy 
 man, as the lady was slackening her steps rather sug 
 gestively. 
 
 " I think there will be time to speak of it now," said 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt, suppressing another angry sense o 
 slight. 
 
 The man who had been much preyed upon by ladies 
 with troubles on their mind which they must open at some 
 what untimely seasons had never found this lady one of 
 that indiscreet company before. But he could but fall 
 obedient into the lingering pace which the widow set, and 
 prepare to give ear. 
 
 "The trouble is one which wholly concerns others, n )t 
 myself," said Mrs. Van Cortlandt with her usual slow, 
 refined utterance. "A very great calamity is likely to 
 befall our friends the Roosevelt* unless they are warned 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 359 
 
 of certain facts which are in my possession. It is so 
 painful an interference for me to undertake personally, I 
 naturally conclude to ask you, as their pastor and mine, to 
 discharge this duty in whatever way you may think best." 
 
 The pastor listened to learn his duty. "There is a 
 young girl in this place whose" the lady hesitated with 
 the proper diffidence of a lady forced to speak of delicate 
 matters to a gentleman 4 whose past has a perfectly 
 ruinous stain. The young person was never of my ac 
 quaintance, but accident informed me of all the facts of 
 her misbehavior at the time. It was several years ago 
 that her scandalous affair occurred. It was very skilfully 
 covered up, I fancy ; so that she has been received ever 
 since as an honest girl. Her face is a striking one, and I 
 recognized her the moment I met her here. But of course 
 I did not feel called upon to betray what I knew about 
 her, until I learned that she was likely to marry a man 
 whose family would naturally sooner see him dead than so 
 married. And he himself is utterly ignorant, of course, 
 of these antecedents of hers. She has, as I have said, a 
 striking sort of face, one that at first sight gives a certain 
 impression of beauty. And being a lively, extremely talk 
 ative young person, she has a great attraction for very 
 young men," said the widow, thinking it wise to admin 
 ister even these small thrusts in her stabbing of Monny s 
 image in the breast of the not very young man who was 
 listening to her. "Several such," Mrs. Van Cortlandt 
 went on, " } T oung men of society and fashion have been 
 here this summer, I find, as her admirers, Ilalstone 
 Roosevelt among them. He was here in his yacht a few 
 weeks since, it seems ; and I have no doubt, from what I 
 have heard, that he is so deeply interested in the girl as to 
 be seeking her in marriage." 
 
 Infinity is n)t wider than was Kenyon Leigh s thought 
 
360 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 from any imagination that his betrothed was the being 
 whom Mrs Van Cortlanclt was speaking of. Not even 
 the small innuendoes which she mingled with her deadly 
 aspersions against the unknown girl in the least suggested 
 Moimy to him. 
 
 4 Talkative ! " to describe by that cheap word the chs rra 
 of Monny s rippling speech would have seemed to her 
 lover a kind of slandering of her. No : he had a strong 
 sense of bewilderment at learning that not the maiden 
 whom with never- to-be forgotten sensations he had seen 
 Ilalstone Roosevelt salute on the pier, that not Mouny, 
 was the magnet who had drawn the young yachtsman to 
 Lonewater, but some unknown frail deceiver sojourning 
 there. He felt quite overwhelmed with surprise, but with 
 no other emotion, as he replied to the widow s mysterious 
 tale with the question, " What is the name of the girl you 
 speak of ? " 
 
 " She is at your own lodgings : she is that Miss Rivers 
 whom 
 
 The man dropped the woman s arm as if he had been 
 struck. " Miss Rivers is to be my wife ! " shot from his 
 lips like the bolt from a thunder-cloud. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlaudt had not quite expected to hear 
 this. She believed that very damaging inroads had been 
 made on Mr. Leigh s fancy by his young fellow-boarder ; 
 but she could never have believed that the fortress which 
 had cost her a four-years siege had surrendered in a few 
 short weeks to a mere curly-haired girl. Still her self- 
 possession did not forsake her at this crisis. She an- 
 swt red firmly, 
 
 " There is only the more reason, then, for me to repeat 
 that she is a ruined 
 
 "Madam!" imperiously interrupted the man, "have 
 you not understood me, that, when you speak to me of 
 
A KI:VI:I:I:ND IDOL. 361 
 
 Miss Rivers, you speak to me of my wife? " And with 
 out lifting his hat from his head, or making any sign of 
 adieu, he turned on his heel, and with the speed of wrath 
 went on his homeward way. 
 
 The lady thus left had but a step or two more to reach 
 her gate ; but she did not take them until she had lis 
 tened with straining ear to the last echo of that rapidly 
 receding footfall. It might return : she had a fear that 
 it might. When it did not, she turned and entered the 
 Inuse, with one sense of satisfaction piercing through all 
 tin 1 , emotions which raged in her breast. In the blind 
 game she was playing she had just grasped one new item 
 of knowledge which would serve her well. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Leigh went at a flying pace over the 
 road between the village and the house that held Monny. 
 
 Entering the familiar little entry, he heard the soft 
 rustle of skirts at the head of the stairs, as a young 
 figure leaned half out of a door there, and then was steal 
 ing noiselessly away again. 
 
 4 k Darling, my own darling, do come here a moment ! " 
 he called to her, with some low, yearning cry, to which 
 Monny came down over the stairs like a bird to its mate. 
 
 What did he want of her? Nothing. Only to fold her 
 quick and close in his arms as he had never quite done 
 before, to press her soft cheeks to his : he had no word 
 to say beyond, "Dear child, it is quite midnight. You 
 should not sit up so late." 
 
 k 1 wanted to see you come home," whispered the girl. 
 
 "1 wanted to come," vehemently replied the lover, 
 thinking, not of the lingering death-bed where he hud 
 been a willing watcher, but of the insult which had come 
 after it to this young creature, which had made his feet 
 devour the road in an instinctive impulse to be protect- 
 ingly near her. 
 
362 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 "I wish it was our own home indeed," be went on. 
 " I wish Ana s name was Ana Leigh this moment, and 
 my right arm around her forever. Tell me, dear," he 
 added, drawing the girl to sit down beside him on the 
 stair, " why need we part for very long when we go 
 away from this blessed old house, which I must leave 
 very soon now, you know? * 
 
 lie had not precisely intended before to urge his young 
 betrothed to an immediate marriage ; but now, if this 
 was a world where innocence like hers could be struck at 
 by calumny, he wanted at once to stand visibly where 
 blows at her must be struck through him. 
 
 "What can there really be to delay for?" he argued. 
 " Wedding-clothes?" he inquired, with his new consid- 
 erateness for the feminine point of view. u Certainly 
 dressmakers would be willing to hurry. They seem to 
 me the most obliging of women," he declared* arguing 
 from his experience with the New- York milliner. " And, 
 besides, I am sure you never wear any thing now that is 
 not beautiful enough for any bride in the world. What 
 can there be to wait f or ? " 
 
 Profound silence had fallen on Monny during these 
 words. The coy dcmurrings, which, under other circum 
 stances, she might have opposed to her lover s entreaty, 
 came not to her lips now : one absorbing pre-occupation 
 held her mute. Yes, in the hush of the deepening night, 
 when every companionship grows more dear and tender, 
 with a sense of all the solemn mysteries which compass 
 our lives about, in this hour, with her lover s breath on 
 her cheek, Monny was again mightily impelled to tell him 
 all that secret. Or could she not wait, as aunt Persy 
 had suggested, till she was his wife? And he wished her 
 to be his wife so soon ! A very brief waiting-time, then, 
 it would be. Surely she might delay this little while. 
 
A REVEHEND IDOL. 3ti3 
 
 All this silent tumult within resulted at last in these sud 
 den words, with which she abruptly broke silence, 
 
 "Mr. Leigh, I want to join your church." 
 
 "Darling, you are in it now. I have no church but 
 that of the true believers. The church of my fathers is 
 only that outward form of it which I love best, because I 
 am at home in it. I hope very much, of course, that you 
 will like to join that too, in due time." 
 
 "But I mean I want to join it now, here on the 
 stairs. Lay your hand on my head, the ministerial 
 hand, and say over me, not the congregation blessing, 
 but a little private and particular and individual 4 God 
 bless. " 
 
 The girl was not trifling, her voice was any thing in the 
 world but trifling; and the ministerial hand, and oh! the 
 lover s hand, was laid on the fair head, and "God bless 
 my own wife ! " was said, "God bless her ! " 
 
 "And forgive her all her sins, negligences, and igno 
 rances," Monny subjoined, making her own rubrics. "If 
 she have any sin that she know not if it be a sin, wash 
 it away, and make her meet to be a minister s wife, 
 such a minister as Keuyon Leigh ! " The sweet voice 
 broke up with a sob ; and with a sudden impulse the girl 
 reached up, and for the first, first time, threw her arms 
 around her lover s neck. He drew her on his knee with 
 that long, clinging clasp, living one of love s immortal 
 moments as this tender heart throbbed so fast and flutter 
 ing against his, but never, never once imagining that 
 heart was quivering with a secret which it longed, yet 
 dreaded to tell him. 
 
 It was in the strain of this man s own nature to con 
 sider that people ought to ask pardon for their igno- 
 ronces, and ivulizc that it would be very hard for them 
 to find it too (if they were people who had had oppor- 
 
364 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 tunity to know) , when ignorances wrought such endless 
 mischief in the world. And that Monny should make 
 just that peculiar rejoinder to his plea for their early 
 marriage seemed to him only characteristic of the intense 
 purity of her nature and aspirations. That benedictory 
 little ceremonial she had asked of him was quite one of 
 her darling ways. And he found it too altogether like 
 the maiden to control very soon, as she now did, the 
 impulsive outburst of feeling in which she had flung her- 
 se .f on her lover s breast there was never too much of 
 Monny. 
 
 "No, no! I wish to talk calm and steady," she said, 
 withdrawing insistently from the arms that would detain 
 her, to sit in her former place on the stairs. She was 
 nerving herself again for the great confession ; for that 
 little absolution which she had craved of her lover had 
 not brought peace, after all. She had not felt quite con 
 firmed, not quite in the church of the true believers 
 no, not with the hand of that bishop of her soul on her 
 head. The true believers must tell. 
 
 She was going to tell now. But the unconscious man 
 beside her, swaying to her apparent mood, rejoined to her 
 last words with, " Calm and steady then, let us talk over 
 things, and consider how, when I go back to New York, 
 that dreary period can be shortened during which I must 
 take a journey even to look at my darling." 
 
 "Shall you truly come often?" asked Monny, still 
 temporizing, still taking up any little remark that might 
 postpone the subject she so dreaded to begin. 
 
 "Every other day at least," declared Mr. Leigh. 
 "And the other day to come and go all the long miles. 
 There will be a useful minister of a parish ! But see how 
 every thing would be simplified if we were married. How 
 can I even buv a house for us to live in without consulting 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 365 
 
 its mistress? And how can I consult her, if she is not 
 there? Evidently she must be there. Evidently, there 
 fore, we must be married, perch a while in hotel-apart 
 ments, whence we can go forth and look us up the perfect 
 dwelling at our leisure. That will be the convenient, the 
 delightful way to begin our new days ; and what do we 
 care for the parading way? I see this very moment how 
 my apartments in New York can be broadened out by 
 taking in the next suite of apartments, rooms that car 
 be made over into studios and boudoirs and every 
 thing." 
 
 4 Is there nobody in the rooms now?" murmured 
 Monny. 
 
 u None but miserable bachelors, who have no rights 
 that a married man is bound to respect. Oh, I can get 
 rooms, if not at my present hotel, then at another, 
 oceans of rooms ; and then, with two of us to find it, how 
 soon we shall find a house ! And, when that is found, I 
 have a famous British housekeeper all ready, a woman 
 competent to move us into it with our eyes shut. I 
 brought her over from Europe this summer for the very 
 purpose. Seriously, there came on my steamer one Mrs. 
 Bunleigh, who was housekeeper at a gentleman s country- 
 seat where I used to make holiday visits when I was a 
 lad at an English school. She is that paragon of all 
 housekeepers, the English trained housekeeper, and wishes 
 to sojourn now in this unworthy land, because of her 
 two grown-up sons, whom she is just starting in cer 
 tain lines of trade in New York. This excellent woman 
 dropped me a true British courtesy on the streets the very 
 last time I went to the city ; and, as I stopped for a word 
 with her, it appeared that her present situation so humili 
 ates her she desired to change it. She is housekeeper in 
 the family of a wealthy merchant of the city. Her griev- 
 
866 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 ance there is a social one. Being a perfectly grammatical 
 woman, and of dignified, not to say commanding, pres 
 ence, her American mistress has given Mrs. Bunleigh a 
 seat at the family table. It was plain that Mrs. Bunleigh 
 had no respect whatever for a civilization which admitted 
 its housekeeper to such intimacy. Dearest, authorize me 
 to notify to-morrow this priceless woman to hold heiself 
 ready to respect the privacies in our house." 
 
 The wooer had turned his talk on all these little trifles 
 of domestic detail in a thought to carry his main point by 
 easy, unalarming stages, with the girl who sat so pensive, 
 yet whose little remarks now and then encouraged him 
 to hope that she might be gradually accepting his idea. 
 Thus now, as he paused in his eloquence over the English 
 housekeeper, Monny said, 
 
 44 Am I not going to be a great expense to you, and no 
 profit, if you hire British housekeepers? Do you know 
 that my fortune is only a very little one, that I am not 
 worth much myself? " 
 
 No, I did not know that : it is a great disappointment 
 to me to learn it. How many golden dollars would these 
 make, melted down, I wonder?" said the doting lover, 
 lifting one of the shining curls, which at this hour were 
 all tumbling down in very picturesque disarray. By the 
 way," he added, "I remember your telling me one day 
 that all this wonderful hair was cut off once, and lost, or 
 thrown away. How came you to do such a sin ? 
 
 A sudden shiver ran over the girl at these words. The 
 secret that she was just going to confess unasked, it yet 
 shook her to have her lover stumble on so unaware. 
 
 " Dear little wind-fiower, you are cold ! " was the man s 
 exclamation at the sensible thrill which quivered through 
 the young frame beside him. "I ought never to have 
 called you down into this chilly entry, knowing weii how 
 
A KKVT-:i:r:xD IDOL. 367 
 
 slow I should be to let you go again. I hear Snsannao 
 coining up the back stairs to bed. AVe shall see the whites 
 of her eyes if she sees us sitting here, the selfish man 
 keeping his darling up when she ought to be asleep." 
 
 And he kissed her, and they parted and she had not 
 told. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlaudt knew perfectly well aU the main 
 facts of that journey to New Orleans, which she meant to 
 use for the ruin of Mouny s good name : we mean she 
 knew those facts, not in their false appearance, but just as 
 they really were. She was, as the reader will have sur 
 mised, that lady-passenger on the cars near New Orleans, 
 styled by Kate De Lancey "the humbug Madonna," 
 whose curious scrutiny of the two young travellers had so 
 incensed the Southern girl. That had been the widow s 
 first sight of Monuy Rivers as she lay asleep on the shoul 
 der of the apparent young man. Her attention even then 
 had been first drawn to the girl by the beauty of her hand, 
 as, in the unconsciousness of slumber, it drooped con 
 spicuously over the back of the car-seat. Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt, with her extreme sensitiveness to that point of 
 personal beauty, had studied the perfection of this hand 
 for some moments from her seat a little in rear of the 
 two ; and, when she presently had occasion to leave the 
 car with other passengers, she turned round to look at 
 the sleeping girl, just as Kate, " forgetting that she was a 
 man," was moved to kiss her. This salute, under the 
 circumstance s, had certainly a highly indiscreet appear 
 ance ; and Mrs. Van Cortlandt, with her European ideas 
 of things, immediately assumed that this was some young 
 scion of aristocracy travelling with his inamorata of an 
 irregular character. And, as she came to this conclusion, 
 <t was not the face of the supposed young man, but of 
 
368 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 the girl, whom her downward-glancing eyelids swept with 
 scorn. It was this look which had so roused the fury of 
 the easily roused Miss Kate. 
 
 Now, it had also chanced, that, two or three days after 
 this encounter, Mrs. Van Cortlandt, bowing to her New- 
 York friend Mrs. Bingham, in the breakfast-room of the 
 St. Charles Hotel, saw under that lady s distinguished 
 care a young girl, whom she presently identified as that 
 sleeping damsel on the train. The chaperonage which 
 the girl at present enjoyed proving at once to the widow 
 how utterly she herself had misconceived the young trav 
 eller s character and position, she naturally took a fresh 
 survey of the latter in her present wide-awake condition. 
 And, as the young figure settled itself at the breakfast- 
 table, Mrs. Van Cortlandt observed that beautiful hand 
 go up to the head with its childish short hair, that there 
 came then a rather odd expression of bewilderment, suc 
 ceeded by a singularly brilliant blush, which made the 
 girl s face fairly dazzling for a moment with its radiant 
 illumination. Every one knows how a gesture will cling 
 to the memory : the merest little way of turning the head, 
 or lifting the eyes, such slight peculiarities of move 
 ment, although they, may be not in the least strange or 
 eccentric, seem to have some gift for fastening themselves 
 on the attention beyond an}^ outline of features in repose. 
 Monny had some little characteristic way of throwing back 
 her hair; and at that hotel breakfast-table she put up her 
 hnad with this involuntary movement, when, finding her 
 hair missing (for the instant she had forgotten that it was 
 cut off), all the consciousness that was connected with 
 those recently sheared locks made her blush. The striking 
 blush, the beauty of the hand, the peculiar movement of 
 the hand, all these were seen in conjunction five years 
 after in the entry of the little Lone water church, and seen 
 
A RFYF.RKXD IDOL. 300 
 
 by Mrs. Van Cortlandt, to the infallible identification of 
 Monny Rivers with that young girl at New Orleans. 
 
 There had been yet another bit of sequel to the affair 
 ere Mrs. Van Cortlandt left the St. Charles ; to wit, 
 after the veritable Carroll De Lancey had arrived at New 
 Orleans, and his sister had resumed her own name and 
 attii e, the young lady chanced one day to meet face to 
 face, in a corridor of the hotel, Mrs. Van Cortlandt. A 
 cat might look upon a king, but no mortal on Kate De 
 Lancey or her friends as she did not choose to be looked 
 at. Accordingly, when Miss Kate now recognized the 
 u sham duchess" of the railway-train she stopped short, 
 gathered up her sweeping feminine array, and taking one 
 of her " Judith" attitudes, with an access of antagonism 
 towards this woman which overbore all prudence, the reck 
 less girl broke out thus, 
 
 " When you sneer again at an innocent baby of sixteen, 
 look out that it isn t my sister-in-law to be ! " 
 
 Having launched this oracular utterance, the haughty 
 beauty swept on her way, leaving Mrs. Van Cortlandt, of 
 course, sufficiently confounded. Kate s marvellous black 
 eyes had flashed so absolutely the same blazing glance at 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt now, which the latter remembered from 
 that fiery young cavalier in the cars, the widow, notwith 
 standing all the affront she felt, stood gazing after the 
 young lady in a sense of some extraordinary mystery. 
 Then, seeing her stop far down the corridor to speak to a 
 servant. Mrs. Van Cortlandt waited to waylay the latter, 
 who, when she came up, proved to be Mrs. Binglmm d 
 maid Jane. 
 
 " Who is that handsome j oung lady who spoke to you 
 just now?" askc d Mrs. Van Cortlandt of the maid. 
 
 u Miss Kate De Lancey of Maryland, ma am." 
 
 " One of the Baltimore De Lanceys? " 
 
370 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 "Those same, ma am." 
 
 " Are any more of the family here? " 
 
 44 Miss Kate s twin-brother, Mr. Carroll De Lancey, 
 came last night 
 
 Ah ! you mean he came several days ago with a very 
 young girl." 
 
 Not to quote this colloquy further, the end of it was, 
 that Mrs. Van Cortlandt extracted from Jane, who had 
 dressed Miss Kate when she changed her masculine for 
 her feminine attire, the whole secret of that young lady s 
 extraordinary personation of her brother. Jane was a 
 most trusty servant, and no tattler : but she looked upon 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt as a friend of her mistress ; and the 
 widow s questions were so directed, that the maid was 
 led on to tell the real truth in order to clear the char 
 acter of Mr. Carroll s young betrothed from any such dis 
 reputable supposition as that they had made the joarney 
 together. 
 
 Now, poor Jane, who was even then ailing, took her bed 
 that very day, of the malady of which she died. Mrs. 
 Bingham was out of the city, and did not return until the 
 next day, when her favorite servant was already in a dan 
 gerous condition, and, as it proved, very near her death. 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt, who had carefully recalled all these 
 facts, said now that there was no human probability that 
 it ever occurred to the dying maid to inform her mistress 
 that she had confided to her the affair of the two girls. 
 Certainly Mrs. Bingham had never mentioned the subject 
 to her, Mrs. Van Cortlandt ; and the latter, after Jane s 
 explanation had furnished a complete solution to the 
 enigma which puzzled her, had been glad to let the whole 
 matter drop in silence. 
 
 It will be seen, from the foregoing sketch of the circum 
 stances, that they presented to the woman whose interest il 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 371 
 
 now was to destroy Monny Rivers, this great conjunction 
 of opportunities ; viz., that she could deal a deadly blow at 
 the girl with entire security to herself, whatever the result 
 of that blow ; for she could declare, as an eye-witness, 
 that this Monny Rivers once took a long journey as the 
 pretended wife of a very fast young man. And, even if 
 the falsity of her tale was found out, no one was alive to 
 whisper that she, the accuser, knew its falsity, knew 
 that the girl s companion on that journey had been no 
 young man at all, but a girl dressed up in her brother s 
 clothes. Clad in this proof-armor for herself, Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt had begun to-night her attack on Monny to Mr. 
 Leigh, seizing upon what she had heard of young Ilalstone 
 Roosevelt s flame for Miss Rivers as the most plausible 
 and telling way of introducing her slanders. She had 
 imagined that Mr. Leigh s fancy for Monny was still 
 sufficiently in the bud for it to be nipped utterly in so 
 fastidious a man by merely dark hints from herself, a 
 simple indication that disgraceful charges existed against 
 the girl. 
 
 " But what was to be done now? " the enraged woman 
 asked herself as she went up to her rooms after that 
 explosion with Mr. Leigh, in which she had learned that 
 Miss Rivers was already his betrothed wife. Sending 
 Tonson at once to bed, who came sleepily forward to 
 wait on her mistress, the latter sat down alone in the still 
 house for a long hour of intense thought. She had dis 
 covered one new thing in the very quality of Mr. Leigh s 
 indignation when he left her at the gate; viz., that he 
 knew nothing as yet, in any shape, of that New-Orleana 
 journey of Miss Rivers. For if he had known it, the 
 widow reasoned, he would have remembered it to-night, 
 so soon as the first passion of his wrath had passed ; he 
 would have bethought himself of that strange adventure, 
 
872 A REVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 and of all the damaging construction to which it waa 
 liable ; and conceiving that the affair had been somehow 
 injuriously blown to her Mrs. Van Cortlandt s ears, 
 lie would have turned back with a word of explanation. 
 The widow knew that this sober second- thought would 
 have been sure to come to the man, and to have brought 
 him back, whatever his pride, and ail the more because 
 of his pride, to speak with her again. lie had made no 
 such re-appearance, conclusive proof that he was in utter 
 ignorance of that passage in Miss Rivers s history. 
 What probability was there that she had told him even of 
 her engagement to Carroll De Lancey ? Let a knowledge 
 of that engagement first come to a man like Kenyon 
 Leigh from without ; let the false story of that entangled 
 journey to New Orleans be sprung on his mind with no 
 knowledge of the true story there to correct it by what 
 misunderstandings might not be stirred up ? 
 
 Darkly these thoughts twined and untwined themselves 
 in the brain of the plotting woman, until they were 
 knotted into a firm web of action. She would spread 
 before Kenyon Leigh, with all exactness of details, her 
 own lying version of that New-Orleans journey, and see 
 what would come of it. 
 
 Certainly there were numberless forces now which 
 might snap the cunningest snare she could lay for the 
 feet of Mr. Leigh s betrothed. But every warfare was 
 waged against elements of uncertainty. " When a great 
 general planned his strategy," she said to herself, " what 
 did he do about all those unknown movements which 
 would meet him from the opposite side? He dared them." 
 She would dare. Fate, as we have shown, permitted that 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt should dare in this case with great 
 impunity. And in the small hours of the night a letter 
 was written, which Tonson would carry to Mr. Leigh by 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 373 
 
 th? morning light. Then the writer of the letter went to 
 her late rest. 
 
 When a previously decorous life breaks out in some 
 piece of atrocious wickedness, it is wont to be curiously 
 asked, " Had this homor always been a consummate hypo 
 crite, doing other such deeds in secret, or did there come 
 some complete moral turning-point, when he consciously 
 sold his soul to Satan?" Probably an explanation far 
 more commonplace, far nearer the level of our common 
 human frailty, would generally be found the true one ; 
 viz., that this criminal kept himself all the while in very 
 comfortable conscience by assuming that there were par 
 ticular circumstances which quite took away from his 
 particular act of crime all the criminal quality which such 
 a deed would have in the abstract. Abstract murderers, 
 it may be, even the murderer sees, monsters who spill 
 human blood for the mere pleasure of seeing it flow, 
 diabolical creatures whom he in no wise resembles. He 
 only stabbed his enemy, the man who angered him, or 
 who stood in his way. 
 
 That Mrs. Van Cortlandt could resolve to put her 
 young rival out of the way by an injury so much worse 
 than death, and sleep calmly after it, was not because she 
 had been in the habit of lying away the characters of 
 innocent girls ; for this was her first act of the kind. 
 This particular girl, against whom she had been planning 
 one enormous lie ever since she first saw her standing 
 beside Kenyon Leigh in the church-entry, she had a 
 particular remorselessness in thus destroying. To be 
 gin with, she assumed this young ward of the lumber- 
 merchant Slabwell to be a parvenue, and the kind of 
 parvenue which roused her strongest animosity; viz., 
 the feminine being who attained social distinction and the 
 homage of men through her talents. These were the 
 
374 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 creatures great opera-singers, actresses, and the like 
 who had been known to scale the social ladder by more 
 audacious bounds than any other variety of mortal, pass 
 ing, sometimes, from a peasant s cottage to a duke s 
 palace. 
 
 This Rivers girl was such a lusus naturce, getting her 
 self into prospective alliance with so aristocratic a family 
 as the De Lanceys when she was scarcely out of her 
 pinafores, having such a class of introductions at New 
 port as enabled her to count beaux like Halstone Roose- 
 volt in her train, and now drawing the famous Kenyon 
 Leigh into the mad folly of marrying her, a girl not 
 only born beneath him, but one whose very gifts implied 
 something unsound and erratic in the character: that 
 he should choose a wife like this was only an example of 
 the utterly wild fancies in love wont to seize upon mature 
 men. 
 
 These were the widow s views : that they were mis 
 taken enough in many directions did not prevent their 
 adding a peculiar unrelenting-ness to her schemes. 
 
A KEVEliEND IDOL. 375 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 next morning, before Mr. Leigh left his rooms, 
 Susannah slipped under his door a letter which a 
 messenger had just brought. Picking it up, and recog 
 nizing the handwriting of Mrs. Van Cortlandt, his first 
 impulse was to send the note directly back unopened. 
 But the next instant the fact that he was a minister took 
 him by the throat. lie was not wont to feel his profes 
 sion throttle him, but it did now. He was the pastor of 
 this lady who had offered him the one insult of his . life, 
 and it was his business to remember that she was under 
 an intolerable but honest mistake. Without doubt this 
 early note to him was a retraction, an apology. In this 
 after-thought, which the writer of the note had secretly 
 counted on for its being opened and read, it was finally 
 opened and read ; and these were the contents : 
 
 " REV. KENYON LEIGH. 
 
 "Dear Sir, If I could have conceived that Miss Rivers had 
 another suitor within the circle of my acquaintance, naturally I 
 should not have said to you what I did last night. But, as it 
 cannot now be unsaid, I have no resource but to lay before you 
 the plain facts which I thought it a duty of friendship to inform 
 the Roosevelts of. 
 
 " Five years ago Miss Rivers, being then a pupil in a New-York 
 boarding-school, became engaged to Carroll De Lancey of Balti 
 more. At the end of her school-term she made a runaway jour 
 ney with this lover from New York to Xew Orleans, escaping 
 from the city, at first, in the dress of a boy. In this disguise she 
 travelled as far as Jackson, Miss., when, supposing, doubtless, 
 
876 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 that she was beyond the reach of recognition, she resumed femi 
 nine attire. In that city she staid all night at a hotel with Mr. 
 De Lancey; the pair registering their names on the hotel-books as 
 man and wife. In this character they then went on to New 
 Orleans, in which part of their travels I saw them myself on the 
 cars, where their infatuated behavior was such as might well draw 
 general attention. 
 
 " Respectfully yours, 
 
 "ADELAIDE VAN CORTLANDT." 
 
 Mr. Leigh tore this letter into fragments : but it had 
 been read ; that was all the writer wanted. And he an 
 swered it on the spot. 
 
 "Madam, Received your note concerning some unknown 
 young woman whom you have committed the extraordinary offence 
 of confounding with the lady who is to be my wife. I have to 
 answer, first, that Miss Rivers has never been engaged to any man 
 but myself, and, second, that your persistence in this most odious 
 chimera I shall never be able to pardon, save by remembering 
 your total want of acquaintance with the young lady who will, I 
 hope, in a- very few weeks bear the name of 
 
 " KENYON LEIGH." 
 
 Giving this note to Tonson, he went down to breakfast. 
 
 Breakfast over, Mr. Leigh was again in his study, its 
 door into the hall being left ajar, as it habitually was in 
 these days, for a standing invitation to one young visitor 
 to enter. 
 
 As he paced restlessly up and down the room now, wait 
 ing for Monny s appearance, he chanced to spy on the 
 carpet a stray scrap of Mrs. Van Cortlandt s note, which 
 had escaped from his destroying fingers. The very sight 
 of this suggestive fragment, as he stooped to pick it up, 
 brought a returning rush of anger which surprised him 
 self. He sat down thrilling with a mysterious sense of 
 exposure, as if he suddenly stood bare to some unknown 
 wind, whose edge, among all the cutting airs that blow, he 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 377 
 
 had never feit before. It was the experience of living in 
 another s life, and that life not a man s, but a woman s. 
 He realized, for instance, that, if a slanderous tale had 
 been told him of some man whom he perfectly trusted, he 
 would merely have laughed at it, and, the more abominable 
 the slander, the more a sense of its absurditv would have 
 left small room for indignation. Or, if the ill tale had 
 really been set forth with all circumstantial details, he 
 would have gone at once to his friend, and said, " Here are 
 certain remarkable lies, which are so reported about you 
 that even honest people who do not personally know you 
 believe them. Tell me what are the true facts in your his 
 tory that have been so perverted into these lying fables, 
 that I may be able to set you right before strangers." 
 
 No such simplicity of dealing could be thought of as to 
 the girl whose reputation was the sacredest to him on 
 earth. The most absolute trust that one could have in a 
 human being did not enable him, he found, to smile at 
 any calumny about Monny. And as for asking her to 
 explain, or even breathing to her one syllable of what he 
 had heard nothing could have been more impossible to 
 him this morning. Yet he did not in the least question 
 that Mrs. Van Cortlandt was laboring under a sincere 
 delusion about Monny : not the faintest doubt of that 
 lady s integrity in all that she had done touched his mind. 
 He recognized, therefore, a certain quality of unreason in 
 the wrath which he felt against her, against anybody 
 and everybody, who, whether they had ever heard Monny 
 speak, or even seen her face, dared to imagine evil of 
 her. Certainly Kenyon Leigh was not a man to strike a 
 woman, still less a lady guilty of nothing worse than a 
 mistake : nevertheless, he could not think of that note 
 without an impulse to deal a blow somewhere. He had 
 suddenly discovered that there were accusations hi this 
 
378 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 world not to be met by explanation, argument, words of 
 any kind, but by fighting. 
 
 All these blind heats of feeling, this perception that 
 man s sentiment for woman brought some peculiar, com 
 plex modification into all mortal laws of action, were so 
 consciously new to Kenyon Leigh, he sat with the contem 
 plative, half-wondering look of a man who suddenly sees 
 the old balances of things swimming round, and tLe new 
 level yet undetermined. And in the larger abstraction of 
 his mood mechanically came and went, as if they were 
 said over in his ear by rote, the words, the names, in Mrs. 
 Van Cortlandt s letter. 
 
 4 Carroll De Lancey" he had heard of him before : it 
 was in some talk of his father s, about a year previous. 
 Judge Leigh was still in the active exercise of his office 
 on the bench ; and at that time his judicial opinion had 
 been privately sought by Mr. Carroll (who had revolved 
 round to America, for a season), as to whether certain 
 restrictions of Gen. Warwick s will could be set aside. 
 What the heir wanted was to make fly the whole of Gen. 
 Warwick s wealth as swiftly as he had already made fly 
 all of it that he could lay his hands on ; and the testator 
 had prudently debarred him, for a long term of years yet, 
 from the former privilege. Judge Leigh had shown the 
 young spendthrift that his wish could not be granted in 
 law. And, as the I eighs and De Lanceys had been some 
 what acquainted in f ormer generations, the judge had 
 chanced to speak with solicitude, in his son s presence, of 
 the wild courses followed by this last of the De Lanceys ; 
 for Carroll s dissipations had become far more pro 
 nounced since those young years in which Monny had 
 known him. From what he recalled now of his father s 
 remarks, Kenyon Leigh could well imagine that Carroll 
 De Lancey had been involved in just such an intrigue as 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 379 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt had described, and that the lady s 
 account was perfectly correct, save her one monstrous 
 mistake of having mistaken the young man s female com 
 panion. 
 
 In all these thoughts about Mouii} 7 , Mr. Leigh became 
 so lost as to be unaware of the girl herself when she 
 presently appeared at his open door, he sitting by the 
 farther window, his head somewhat turned away. 4 She 
 trod softly ; for her young heart was beating with a great 
 timidity this morning, and it increased to a kind of fear 
 as she stood arrested on the threshold by the very sight of 
 her lover sitting there, so unaware of her, in that stirless 
 attitude, as if the physical life was almost suspended by 
 the intensity of the inner mental action. She meant to 
 make the great confession to-day, before the sun should 
 set ; and, wtth this trembling thought, her eyes took in, 
 with some indescribable keenness of vision, the very 
 breadth of the man s shoulders, the strong lines of his 
 head as they came out against the light, the whole mascu 
 line unlikeness to herself : for the moment, the charm of 
 that unlikeness was lost in the awe of it ; for the moment, 
 her betrothed seemed to her an utterly unapproachable 
 being. He stirred, perhaps he felt Monny in the air: 
 turning his head, he rose up at once to his towering height. 
 
 Her mood of the moment was so strong on the girl, 
 she involuntarily put out her hands, waving them, palms 
 downward, with a suppliant gesture : 
 
 "Oh, please stay down in j^our chair when I come in, 
 and make yourself a little smaller ! " 
 
 " llathcr a disrespectful way to receive a lady," said 
 the mighty man, obediently reseating himself. 
 
 " No, no ! The usual etiquette shall be reversed in the 
 case of giants. It shall be counted a sign of respect in 
 them to remain seated, and let the small people stand." 
 
380 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 * At least they may hold the small people up, then," 
 said the lover, drawing the girl to his side. 
 
 It was still such a great and wonderful thing to put a 
 lover s arm around Monny, to caress her, ever so lightly, 
 the entrancing presence for the moment dimmed all other 
 consciousness ; then he said, "And where are we going? 
 for Monny was dressed for walking. 
 
 " To the village, of an errand." 
 
 * And I am not to be invited to go too? " 
 
 4< When have I ever invited you to go to the village 
 with me of errands, dressmaking errands? " 
 
 "Dressmaking in this village?" queried the man, a 
 little surprised, but rashly fancying in the very word some 
 hopeful suggestion of wedding-clothes. 
 
 "Not my own dressmaking," said Monny, " some 
 body s else, Clara Macey s. She is having a new fall 
 suit, and I am going down to see about it a little." 
 
 I supposed dressmakers required their customers to 
 come to them." 
 
 " No : it is only the very superior ones who can take on 
 that dignity. Common dressmakers, like myself, work 
 round from house to house." 
 
 "Ah! I cannot think what business, what friends, 
 would take me abroad this morning," said the lover 
 reproachfully. 
 
 "But there is nothing in the whole range of a man s 
 duties so important as the proper looping of a polonaise," 
 declared Monny. The foolish little words she was mys 
 teriously eased and happy at finding herself able to say 
 them, just as of old, to this tremendous being. " Clara 
 and her mother," she gossiped on, "have cut and made 
 the suit very nicely by one of Mine. Demorest s patterns, 
 which they sent for at my suggestion ; and now I am 
 going in to loop up the drapery of the costume, give the 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 381 
 
 final touches, the true urban fling. Clara is going, lo 
 spend the winter in Boston, you SP " 
 
 " How long time will this vanity take?" asked Mr. 
 Leigh. 
 
 44 It is according to how much vanity I put in. Clara 
 Macey has very little vanity herself : so I shall put in a 
 good deal. I must educate her by her clothes." 
 
 4 Seriously, my darling, how long are you going to be 
 away this morning? " 
 
 " Truly not much more than an hour." 
 
 " Tis twenty years till then. What am I to do mean 
 while?" 
 
 "Oh! you can go back to some of those deep, deep 
 thoughts you were thinking just as I came in. If you sit 
 apart in the inner court, that is to say your study, wear 
 ing that awful majesty of looks, when " 
 
 " When we are married," promptly put in the lover. 
 
 "Then, in that state of life," the maid went on, "it 
 will be necessary for you to keep by you a kind of sceptre, 
 after the style of King Ahasuerus, something to hold 
 out, you know, when poor little trembling Esther comes 
 in, as a sign that she may speak, or must be put to death 
 on the spot for her intrusion. Only I do not exactly wish 
 to call myself Esther; for I never liked her hanging 
 Hainan s ten sons on the gallows ! What had they done? 
 And all those that she got slain on the fourteenth day of 
 the month Adar ! Do you believe in Esther? " 
 
 "I am thinking of that sceptre," replied the minister, 
 not to commit himself in a point of Old Testament criti 
 cism too early in the morning, " wondering where I can 
 obtain such an article in a republic." 
 
 "You might substitute a cane: or no you do not 
 carry a cane ; then you can take an umbrella, and hold 
 that out." 
 
382 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 "Open, or shut?" 
 
 " Well, shut it could signify that all women are to flee 
 on peril of their lives ; open, that you are ready to endure 
 for a while the rain of feminine speech." Still the foolish 
 little words : she went on saying them from old habit of 
 teasing this lover, and for the sweetness of seeing, by 
 certain changing lines in his thoughtful face, that she 
 pleased, that she was dear to him, even in her nonsense ; 
 yes, she had the assurance that he loved her in some 
 moods. But in his other moods, in that mood of high 
 contemplation which so wrapped him a few moments ago, 
 how would she look to him then, with her faults, witli 
 that stor} 7 w T hich she must tell him to-day? With this 
 inward question the playful sparkle died out of her eyes ; 
 and she said in a tone softly wistful, even sad, 
 
 4 Those thoughts you were thinking when I came in 
 they were far, far away from me, I am sure ; far from all 
 persons ; gone into the world of pure ideas, where there is 
 nothing to mar, where the soul does have its desire of 
 perfection. Tell me, Kenyon Leigh, what nobler world 
 were you dreaming of, just, just as I came in? " 
 
 " Darling," replied the man gently, for the girl s voice 
 had grown strangely tremulous, " see who is the dreamer 
 now. I sat here thinking only of Anemone Rivers, of 
 this real world where she is : surely every thought I had, 
 began and ended with her." 
 
 "And between the beginning and the ending where 
 did the thoughts go?" persisted Monny, "those long, 
 long, parabolic curves they must have been making when 
 I came in ! Tell me this once : I wish to see into the 
 constriction of a man s mind, to know how he can be 
 thinking so hard of a person, he does not know when the 
 person has come, it was so strange to me that you did 
 not know I had come ! " panted the girl, who had missed 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 383 
 
 in h3r lover love s keen waiting, when every nerve listen! 
 for a footfall, and little guessed through what involved 
 solicitude for her his mind had strayed out into those 
 abstract reflections whose abstract quality Monuy had 
 instinctively recognized. 
 
 Well might Kenyon Leigh feel that woman brought a 
 complexity into existence ; for, at this whimsical demand 
 of his betrothed, he did what he had never done before in 
 his life, what was more foreign to his nature, if possible, 
 than downright lying, he quibbled. He told the actual 
 things which had passed through his mind, but transposed 
 and changed all their connections. 
 
 Thinking of the one person, I thought of other 
 persons suggested by her," he began, not very fluently. 
 "Of my father, for instance. It crossed my mind, as 
 I sat here, that the morning mail would soon be in, and 
 that I might hear from him to-day at home. He has 
 been on a trip to the Yosemite, as I have told you, 
 started just before I arrived from Europe, so that I 
 have not seen him for more than a year. I naturally 
 remember to-day, that I shall have the pride and joy of 
 announcing to him the new daughter whom I hope very 
 soon" 
 
 Partly moved by some bashful little impulse to hasten 
 over allusions to the new daughter, Monny interrupted 
 here with, 
 
 "And what other subjects and persons were in your 
 head? You are to tell me every thing, you know. I 
 shall see by your eyes when you have been truly candid," 
 said the- girl, her own bright eyebeams mischievously fol 
 lowing and looking into her lover s optics, whichever way 
 he turned his glance. And partly because he was so 
 awkward in any role but the truly candid one, and partly 
 because those brown eyes looking into the construction of 
 
 
 
384 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 ft man s mind made him more and more distractinglj 
 helpless, he said, in his absolute belief that Monny could 
 never even have heard of the dissipated young Baltimo- 
 rean, who had lived nearly all his life abroad, 
 
 4 Thinking of my father, and of the last time I saw 
 him, I thought of a person he was concerned with just 
 than, a very unhopeful young man whom you would 
 not care to hear about, one Carroll De Lancey." 
 
 "Do you know Aim?" gasped the startled girl, with 
 drawing from the arm which encircled her. 
 
 "Why, do you know him?" rejoined Mr. Leigh, with 
 more composure than the dismayed Monny had shown in 
 her sudden outcry : still he was inwardly surprised, much 
 surprised. 
 
 "I knew him once," said the girl, "very long ago. 
 His sister went to school with me in New York : that was 
 how he came to be of my acquaintance. I knew him only 
 a little, very little indeed. I must go now," starting 
 away with nervous flurry. I promised Clara Macey 
 that I would be there very soon after nine o clock ; and 
 it is nine now. Good-by ! " And she was gone to the 
 door. On its threshold she paused, fluttered uncertainly 
 for an instant, then suddenly flew back to her lover, 
 where he sat in his chair, held by the surprise which was 
 still on him. 
 
 4 You will not think I am going to be so prying an I 
 tiresome always, asking people for their thoughts. 1 
 hope I am not that jealous kind of tease. It was a silly 
 whim that took me this once, because because I was 
 truly a little afraid when I came in, you looked so far 
 away. And I had things to say to you," she almost 
 sobbed, "many things. I am coming back to say them 
 now, just as soon as I can. I am going to hurry. Good- 
 by, dear Kenyon Leigh 1 " 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 885 
 
 "Good-by, my darling, my one darling, whatever 
 whims take you ! " tenderly repeated the lover. " Good- 
 by ! " And this time Moiiny really went. 
 
 Certainly the emphasis with which she had declared the 
 slightness of her acquaintance with a young man whom 
 Bhe was once engaged to marry had a very misleading 
 sound. But those hurried words she had dropped, in the 
 trepidation of finding that Mr. Leigh knew Carroll De 
 Lancey, and knew ill of him, were all moved by the thing 
 that came uppermost in her mind ; viz., the plea she was 
 going to make for herself, that, if she had known that 
 young man better, she should never have fancied that she 
 loved him. And the way in which she put this truth of 
 her brief acquaintance with the young Southerner she 
 did not pause to consider. It was one of those unfortu 
 nate gaps (unfortunate, if a man should ever come to 
 weigh her statements in the balances of suspicion), 
 which, in the feminine swiftness of her thoughts, were 
 sometimes left between the thing in her mind and the 
 words she spoke aloud. 
 
 Her lover certainly did not weigh any of her words 
 with suspicion now. He put down all her startled man 
 ner to the fact that he himself had introduced young De 
 Lancey s name with a stigma, reason enough why the 
 sensitive Monny would have blushed to own his acquaint 
 ance. Nor need that -acquaintance have so surprised 
 him, he reflected : Carroll De Lancey, as a young man of 
 birth and fashion, had doubtless been decorous enough in 
 his outside ways, especially a few years back. Alto 
 gether, he returned to his absorbing thoughts of the last 
 hours, about hastening his marriage ; and in the midst of 
 these there was presently brought to the house, instead 
 of the expected letter from his father, a telegram. Judge 
 Leigh had just reached home, and was somewhat ill, not 
 
386 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 dangerously, but hoped his son Kenyon was at liberty to 
 come at once for the visit that it had been understood 
 he should make to his home when his father arrived. 
 Reflecting now, that, the sooner he set out on this filial 
 journey, the sooner he should be back, if there was noth 
 ing serious to detain him, he considered his telegram but 
 a moment before deciding that he must take the next 
 train up to Boston, which there was only just time to 
 catch. So, leaving a farewell line for Moimy, Mr. Leigh 
 ran by the shortest way to the station. 
 
A BEVEBEND IDOL. 887 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE lady who owned so efficient a spy as Tonson did 
 not long remain in ignorance of this departure of 
 Mr. Leigh, and she decided to improve his fortunate ab 
 sence by making an entirely new move. She resolved to 
 call on Miss Rivers. 
 
 Accordingly, about three P.M. of this same day, Mrs. 
 Van Cortlandt appeared at Mrs. Doane s. Monny was 
 in her studio ; and, the lady sending up with her card a 
 request that she might be allowed to come directly up to 
 that room, Monny concealed her picture of the Knight- 
 Templar, and then received the visitor. 
 
 44 You have not called on me yet, Miss Rivers/ began 
 the latter, sinking gracefully into the offered chair. " But 
 we do not wait for our minister s wife to call first : so, 
 hearing that you are to stand in that relation to us of 
 St. Ancient s, I present myself." 
 
 At this rather formidable address from "us of St. 
 Ancient s," the maiden blushed a little, but replied quiet 
 ly, "As I understood that you had come to Lone water for 
 retirement, I feared calls from a stranger, like myself, 
 might be an intrusion." 
 
 The widow, perceiving that the girl was not going to 
 be led into any babble about her lover, rejoined with her 
 most charming manner, 
 
 " You see that you were too modest. I have desired 
 the pleasure of being acquainted both with yourself and 
 your works. I had heard of your talent, but could not 
 
388 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 imagine seeing a gallery like this," she said, glancing 
 around the room crowded with pictures. " May I look at 
 all these lovely things ?" she asked. And, rising, she 
 made a queenly progress round the studio, surveying 
 Monny s labors. 
 
 How did this woman manage to impress a girl like 
 Moony Rivers as scarcely any woman had ever impressed 
 her before ? She certainly said nothing that was either 
 brilliant or wise ; and the politeness, even of her intro 
 ductory remarks to a young maiden whose engagement was 
 not yet made public, was very questionable indeed, as the 
 well-bred Monny would have felt if any other stranger 
 had so addressed her. Yet, as she swept round that little 
 chamber, she grew a more and more exalted being to 
 Monny with every step. One sees such mysteriously 
 superior personages among those who have long breathed 
 the air of privilege. Their conversation has no illumina 
 tion in it, either as to the life which now is or that which 
 is to come : often, unlike Mrs. Van Cortlandt, they have 
 no claims whatever to beauty, and it would be hard to say 
 wherein their manners are really fine ; yet, being satu 
 rated with self-consciousness, of some refined instead of 
 the vulgar sort, they impose almost their own estimate of 
 themselves on all humbler souls. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt had not only her great beauty, but 
 an eminent capacity for taking all that kind of social polish 
 which seems like knowledge. Even her comments on the 
 pictures, so reticent, so quietly dropped, had a certain ef 
 fect of discrimination. Her own role in the world seemed 
 that of being all perfections, a dignity quite beyond that 
 of doing, pictures, or aught else. The young girl did nc t 
 think this cynically, but worshipfully, as this imposing 
 lady reviewed her studio. The visitor certainly had some 
 manner that enabled her to do things which in anothei 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 389 
 
 would have seemed altogether presuming. Thu > she of 
 fered herself as a subject for Monny s pencil. Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt had very often been a sitter to artists, and her 
 self-suggested portrait now had naturally a deeper motive 
 than vanity. She wished to engage Monny in a special 
 conversation, and took this means to prolong her stay be 
 yond the conventional limits of a call. The lady brought 
 about her proposal, of course, by the due degrees. Monny 
 was delighted to have the opportunity of sketching this 
 beautiful face, and Mrs. Van Cortlaiidt took off her bonnet 
 at once. The young artist posed her subject ; and, when 
 she had become well absorbed with her sketch, the lady 
 remarked in a quietly careless way, 
 
 " Do you know, Miss Rivers, that, while you are tracing 
 my face, I have traced yours at last? I had a strong 
 impression of having somewhere seen you before, when 
 Mr. Leigh first presented you to me in the little church 
 here ; but until this moment I could not recollect where." 
 
 "I am sure I had never seen you before," said the 
 unsuspecting girl, looking up with her frank smile. " I 
 could never, never have forgotten your face, if I had once 
 seen it. I remember faces always," added Monny, lest 
 her involuntary tribute to Mrs. Van Cortlandt s beauty 
 should have sounded too broad a flattery. 
 
 " And I also, although I am not an artist, have a keen 
 memory for faces," replied the lady. " Yours, I am sure, 
 I saw once at New Orleans. Did you not spend a few 
 days at the St. Charles Hotel there five years ago last 
 spring? " 
 
 Monny had dropped her crayon in the start with 
 which she heard these words. Stooping to pick it up, she 
 ssiid in a faint, reluctant voice, "Yes, I was in New 
 Orleans at that time." 
 
 " I was sure of it. But stay no, you could not have 
 
390 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 been that yonng girl, after all," said Mrs. Van Cortlandt, 
 with well-feigned alternations of voice, as of one suddenly 
 pressed on by a crowd of confused recollections. "Now 
 that I remember, she was married, an extremely youth 
 ful bride : still she was married. I saw her not only in 
 the hotel, but in the cars, on her way to New Orleans. 
 She was with her young husband then. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Carroll De Lancey that was the name: I remember i.t 
 well, an old Maryland family. Pray, was it your mar 
 ried sister? Have you such a sister so near your own 
 age, and marvellously like you? " 
 
 Monny Rivers could not lie ; and now, although it 
 seemed to her that fate could not have ordained a more 
 appalling thing than that she must confess to this lady, 
 of all beings, her girlhood s wild adventure, she lifted 
 her young head, and said, with what steadiness she could 
 command, as she laid down her crayon, 
 
 "I never had a sister, Mrs. Van Cortlandt. And the 
 person you remember at New Orleans as Mrs. Carroll 
 De Lancey must have been really myself; for I 
 went there under that name. It was an assumed name. 
 I was not married." 
 
 " Assumed name ? Not married?" repeated the lady 
 in a voice finely modulated to express unspeakable aston 
 ishment held in check by politeness. " Pardon me ; but, 
 as I have said, I saw the very young lady called Mrs. 
 Carroll De Lancey in the cars, and her husband with her 
 surely her husband : it were to traduce her you 
 any young lady, to suppose that travelling-companion was 
 not her husband. I do not understand. I must beg yon 
 to explain." 
 
 The entrapped Monny saw no escape : she m \ist take 
 up the cross of that explaining. Need we say how crusn- 
 ing it was to her, how infinitely more scandalous sounder* 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 391 
 
 in her own sensitive ears that entangled tale as she re 
 hearsed it to the stately lady representative of Mr. Leigh s 
 parish than when comforting aunt Persy was the hearer? 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt s double effort was to convince the 
 impressible girl, that, in her New-Orleans journey, she 
 had done something which society must needs regard as 
 perfectly heinous, but which she individually was moved 
 to condone and cover up, through regard for the young 
 betrothed of her minister. The accomplished woman of 
 the world was quite equal to this work : the art which she 
 put into her listening to Monny s story was something 
 entirely beyond the reacli of the vulgar. No rudest 
 outcry of surprise at its surprising passages could have 
 been half so stingingly felt by poor Monny as the slight 
 lifting of those beautifully pencilled brows, the shocked 
 amaze that was allowed to gleam for an instant, as if 
 involuntarily, in the handsome gray eyes-, to be quickly 
 veiled by courtesy, the restrained comment and question 
 interspersed from time to time without any air of curi 
 osity, yet so contrived as to wring the last item of all that 
 history from the girl s lips. A part of it was really new 
 to Mrs. Van Cortlandt. All the intrigue about the will she 
 had never known a hint of before ; had never dreamed 
 that there was any deeper motive for the masquerade than 
 the madcap whim of Kate De Lancey, contriving the 
 disguise as a convenient one for two young girls to take a 
 long journey in unattended. 
 
 "Of course you have never mentioned a word of this 
 affair to Mr. Leigh," said Mrs. Van Cortlandt at last, 
 when she was satisfied that she had found out every thing 
 which was to be known. 
 
 " 1 meant to have told him to-day," replied Monny 
 quickly; " but he was called away very unexpectedly. I 
 had an errand to the village, and when I came back he 
 
392 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 was gone. I shall tell him all about it just as soon as 
 he returns." 
 
 "Surely," said Mrs. Van Cortlandt with her softly 
 shocked manner, " you cannot repeat such a story as 
 you have told me to a gentleman. Pardon me, my 
 dear girl, if I take the liberty, since you have no mother, 
 to suggest to you that Mr. Leigh is a very fastidious 
 raan all men are so about what a young girl says and 
 cloes." 
 
 The present young girl was one who could be imposed 
 on by this miserable prudery of advice, as the widow had 
 well discerned in the close study which this afternoon s 
 long interview had enabled her to make of her victim. 
 Monny colored painfully at being thus supposed to need 
 reminders to modesty ; then she broke out, 
 
 " But I felt I must tell him, however trying it was. I 
 do not like to have secrets from Mr. Leigh. It haunts me 
 all the time. I have no peace." 
 
 " You have not reflected, I see, that this easing of your 
 own mind may be at the cost of bringing Mr. Leigh into 
 an extremely painful perplexity. Your secret is one 
 which a man might feel that honor forbade him to keep." 
 
 Monny looked up blankly at these words. 
 
 u I mean," explained the widow, " all the deceit prac 
 tised by your school-friend to get that will made in favor 
 of herself and the brother whom you expected to marry. 
 Such a fraud was a robbery of the nearer heirs, which a 
 man like Mr. Leigh might feel himself bound to see 
 rectified, even at this late day. You have not thought of 
 all this?" 
 
 "Oh, no!" murmured Monny, growing pale with the 
 utterly new dismay which these artful suggestions brought 
 her. 
 
 " The property was divided between brother and sister, I 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 393 
 
 understand," quietly pursued Mrs. Van Cortlandt. Did 
 Miss DC Lancey leave any heirs? " 
 
 " Her baby. And the Italian nobleman whom Kate 
 married, although he was in brilliant position, was not 
 very rich, I believe. It would be too cruel I could not 
 bei r to be instrumental in such a thing to take away 
 the inheritance of that child, Kate s child. Surely that 
 would be the robbery now ; for the Regdons, Gen. War 
 wick s nearest heirs, were very rich themselves, Kat~ 
 said, and had no natural claim on him at all, and he did 
 not intend them to touch his money. Oh ! I cannot believe 
 Mr. Leigh would think it necessary to move in such a 
 tangled affair, to go back of that will, when Gen. War 
 wick cannot come out of his grave now to make another." 
 
 " Precisely because it is so tangled an affair," smoothly 
 replied the artful woman, " it should not, in my judgment, 
 be imparted to a man. Men like to move, and are ex 
 pected to move, on straight lines. A woman is not so 
 rigorously held to account in business matters. Thus 
 the world might, perhaps, grant that a young woman, a 
 girl so juvenile as you were when this deed was done, did 
 not realize all the grave thing it is to tamper with property 
 interests. But a man would be allowed no such ignorance 
 of affairs ; and if he were made acquainted with such an 
 act, however long after, he might feel himself a kind of 
 accomplice in the fraud, if he did not reveal it. liein, a 
 wo:n:in myself, I a-iive with you, that the wrong in the 
 making of that will was one of those wrongs which w<,uM 
 probably become a worse wrong by any attempt to right it 
 now. Clearly, so long as Mr. Leigh is left in ignorance 
 of the" affair, he has no duty about it whatever. Why, 
 then, trouble him with this painful knowledge?" 
 
 The girl sat for a moment in stark bewilderment at this 
 8\>eeioiis reasoning ; then she made a small clutch after 
 her common sense once more. Sho began slowly, 
 
394 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 1 It is something I have never thought of before, that 
 there could be two kinds of right, one for a man, and 
 another for a woman. If it is so, Mrs. Bingham. who 
 knew all about Kate s affair, is the one to tell me what I 
 should do. I will write and ask her. I have thought a 
 little of writing her before, for myself ; but now there 
 is a new cause, I will write instantly. You say she is in 
 Europe : do you know just where she is? " 
 
 " I have no idea," replied the widow evasively. 
 
 " But surely," urged Monny in her eagerness, " a lady 
 so distinguished in society as Mrs. Bingham there must 
 be those in New York who know her present address. 
 Would you do me the great kindness to help me a little 
 in this to help me find out where she can be written 
 to?" 
 
 " I will try : leave all that to me," said Mrs. Van Cert- 
 land, who, if this correspondence was to be, determined 
 to keep it in her own hands. 
 
 "Thank you very much indeed," said Monny warmly. 
 
 4 And let me suggest to you," continued Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt, "that there are other much more important 
 inquiries for you to make immediately. That trunk which 
 you mentioned, the trunk which you lost in Jackson," 
 said the widow, who had extracted from Monny this after 
 noon all the minutiae of her Southern journey, and seized 
 at once on the incident of the lost trunk as something 
 which she could weave usefully into her schemes, " you 
 say it was left behind on the depot platform? " 
 
 "Yes, it was of so little consequence," replied Monny. 
 
 "It is of the utmost consequence to you that it should 
 not fall : nto other hands," answered the widow with the 
 gravest e nphasis. " After a certain lapse of time (once 
 in seven years is, I believe, the stated period) all bag- 
 thus abandoned at depots, and never claimed, is set 
 
A KEVEUEND IDOL. 395 
 
 op at public auction, and sold. After a trunk is sold in 
 that way, it is opened, of course, by the buyer. Are 
 there not -things in your trunk which would identify it, 
 your name, for instance?" 
 
 " Why, yes, it may be. There was a little underclothing 
 in the trunk, I believe, things that would be marked, of 
 course. Oh, yes ! my name was probably there," repeated 
 Mouny in a bewildered way, beginning to feel as if de 
 tectives were already on her track, with the formidable 
 tone which Mrs. Van Cortlandt had assumed in her talk 
 about the will, and now about the lost trunk. 
 
 44 The trunk may still be locked up in the Jackson depot, 
 since it is but five years since it was left there," said the 
 widow. u I advise you to send on at once, and ascertain. 
 Send a full description of the trunk and its contents, and, 
 if it is there, you cannot fail to identify it. Then, of 
 course, as soon as the depot officials are satisfied that 
 you are the owner, they will send it right on wherever you 
 direct. I will help you arrange all the details of this. 
 Perhaps we had better inquire by letter first, and then use 
 the telegraph to expedite matters." 
 
 44 You are very good," murmured Monny. 
 
 4 I feel that such a tell-tale piece of property as that 
 trunk, with a masculine suit of clothes in it, ought to be 
 got safely back into your own possession: otherwise no 
 one knows into whose hands it might eventually fall, to 
 be traced to you, and stir up strange stories. A clergy 
 man s wife cannot be too careful of her reputation," said 
 the mentor, with an emphasis which tingled to Mouny s 
 very soul. " It will be desirable for me to see you again 
 scon," added the visitor, rising at last to go. The sketch 
 of her head had, of course, been long ago dropped in the 
 agitating talk into whL-h the artist had IKJOII led. " Where 
 shall we meet? You take long walks on the seashore, I 
 hear. Who accompanies you? " 
 
396 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 " I go alone with Duke George." 
 
 The lady made a movement of her brows, as if asking 
 what manner of Cape-Cod nobleman that might be. 
 
 "He is my dog," explained Monny. "I mean aunt 
 Persy s dog. He really belongs to the house ; but he 
 seems mine, because he always goes about with me." 
 
 4 Is the keeper of this house your relative?" asked 
 the visitor, again with her politely shocked maitner. 
 
 " Mrs. Doane ? oh, no ! I formed the habit of calling 
 her aunt when I was a child, and used to come here with 
 my nurse," said Monny, feeling that the lady of St. 
 Ancient s was thinking her very pitiably a child still, 
 falling into this strange rusticity of quoting the names 
 of the household, human and canine, as if all the world 
 must needs know them. 
 
 In much more serious ways than these did this dis 
 composing visitor drive Monny completely out of herself, 
 skilfully managing through all this long interview to make 
 herself at once dreaded and relied on by the young girl, 
 who was easily led to exaggerate into a monstrous offence 
 and disgrace that fact in her life of having worn male 
 attire. For, like all thoroughly modest women, Monny 
 was thoroughly conventional in every thing that concerned 
 the proprieties of her sex. It is doubtful, by the way, 
 whether the best girls are at all apt to go back of the 
 convention in these things to inquire its why and where 
 fore, extremely doubtful if it is really a sign of the 
 most innocent mind among maidens to be much given to 
 original views and positions as to what is modest or im 
 modest in social observances. Blindly, and with innocent 
 thoughtlessness, a young girl dances such dances, for in 
 stance, and wears such dresses to dance in, as she sees 
 other reputable ladies do : usage, the practice of the best 
 persons, is to her the sole law in these matters, within 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 397 
 
 which she is perfectly unconscious and serene, outside 
 of which she has a horror to be found. So, while a more 
 forward-thinking young woman might have re-assured 
 herself by reflecting that there was but small difference 
 between a modern pull-back and those cadet s trousers, 
 Monny, who could wear the former, while it was the 
 fashion, without a thought of impropriety, had seen her 
 self in the latter, to use her own words, as a character to 
 be taken up by the police. And a tortaring sense that 
 Mr. Leigh s lady parishioner thought her, at the best, a 
 very hoidenish, underbred girl, made Monny submit her 
 self with the more passive obedience to whatever course 
 of proceeding the widow marked out for her. 
 
 The parish had got hold of the minister s wife, even 
 before she bore his name. 
 
398 A BEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 MR. LEIGH returned to the Cape after a four-days- 
 absence, having left Judge Leigh recovering from 
 his illness, and well rejoiced to learn the intended mar 
 riage of his only yet uu wedded son. 
 
 It was past sunset when the eager traveller came riding 
 over the familiar stage-road from the village station to 
 Mrs. Doane s ; and, lo ! he met Monny on the way. Jump 
 ing from the vehicle to greet the surprised girl (she did 
 not expect him until the morrow) , he bade the driver go 
 on to Mrs. Doane s with only his portmanteau, perceiving 
 that Monny was not inclined to step into the stage, and 
 ride home with him. 
 
 " I am so surprised at your coming to-night ! " repeated 
 the girl, with some strange fluttering. " I did not imagine 
 meeting you on the stage. I had started for the village, 
 and" s he faltered, "I really think I must go on. I 
 had a most important errand. * 
 
 44 Then I will go with you," said the lover, turning 
 promptly about. 
 
 u Oh, no ! I had started alone, and I can go on so just 
 as well. You must be tired." 
 
 4 Tired ? How tired must a man be to allow the dearest 
 being to go over this desolate road alone in the gloaming? " 
 
 "No, no, please! I had rather you would not go." 
 urged Monny in a tone of entreaty that there was no mis 
 taking. "You know it has been a little understood that 
 we should not walk about together yet in public. And 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 399 
 
 my errand is to your friend Mrs. Van CorLandt. She 
 has called on me since you have been away : she shows 
 me much friendship." 
 
 Mr. Leigh stood astounded : then fiis amaze began tc 
 clear a little, through a rapid inward process of conjec 
 ture and conclusion ; and the end of it all was that he 
 said quietly, 
 
 44 Go on, then: I will wait for you here. Surely I 
 shall wait for you, and come to meet you. Where is the 
 dog?" he asked, looking round, and missing Mouny s 
 invariable protector. 
 
 "I left him at home to-night. I thought I had better 
 not have great dogs with me, calling on ladies who 
 have lived so much in Europe," said poor Monny, who 
 had left Duke George behind, from a feeling that Mrs. 
 Van Cortlandt considered it a piece of Bohemian wildness 
 for her to go about thus accompanied. 
 
 The inevitable thought that "ladies who had lived so 
 much in Europe would think it far queerer for a girl to 
 be taking lonely evening walks without any escort at all, 
 naturally crossed Mr. Leigh s mind ; but of course he did 
 not speak it aloud. 
 
 44 The sun sets so deceivingly quick now, I did not 
 think it was quite so late," said the girl apologetically, 
 perceiving that Mr. Leigh was not altogether satisfied ; 
 then she hurried swiftly away. 
 
 From the little group of pine-trees where they had 
 halted (it was at a point about two-thirds of the way 
 from Mrs. Doane s house to the village), the man stood 
 looking after the maiden with a sense that it was a most 
 extraordinary contingency that he should be forced to 
 stand helpless in the highway, and see his darling walk 
 straight t3 a woman who had believed such monstrous 
 things of her. True, when the first amaze with which he 
 
400 A REVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 had heard where Monny was going was past, he felt that 
 this mysterious visit of hers to Mrs. Van Cortlandt ought 
 to be pleasing to him. Evidently the lady had become 
 disabused of her gross error, either through his own state 
 ment, or something which she had learned ; and she had 
 hastened to atone for her offence by calling on Monny, 
 and, as it appeared, establishing intimacy at once. In this 
 idea he had allowed the maiden to go on : still the situa 
 tion disturbed him ; and he soon emerged from the belt of 
 pine-trees to keep the girlish figure in sight as it rose and 
 sank, like a little shallop on a wave, with the undulations 
 of the way. Then, as it grew to a nebulous shade in the 
 twilight, and vanished in the hollow where lay the village, 
 he walked on forthwith to do his waiting at the nearest 
 point. Just outside the village he halted, lingering about 
 there : over the endless stretching levels of sand and sea 
 the wind began to boom desolately ; a gray night was 
 setting in, and he could not disguise from himself that 
 some chill had fallen on the meeting he had been antici 
 pating all clay over so many rolling miles. Meanwhile 
 Monny arrived at Mrs. Van Cortlandt s. 
 
 "You sent for me, I am here," said the girl. 
 
 "Yes, another telegram has just come through from 
 Jackson, about the trunk. They have found it at last ; 
 and I sent for you, that you might forward an order for 
 it in your own name. Sit right down here and write the 
 telegram, and I will see it sent to the office." 
 
 Is there no letter from New York yet about Mrs. 
 Bingham s European address?" asked Monny, always 
 more anxious about this matter than about the lost trunk. 
 
 "No: I do not learn that yet," replied the widow, 
 who had no idea of learning at all where Mrs. Bingham 
 was. "When is Mr. Leigh expected?" she added. 
 
 " Oh ! he has just come. He met me on the way here." 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 401 
 
 " And did you tell him where you were going?" cried 
 the widow. 
 
 "Why, certainly. I did not dare go hack, lest there 
 was some very important reason for you to see me. Oh, 
 it is all very distressing ! " 
 
 u There was an important reason/ replied the intriguer, 
 whose first alarm at Monny s accidental meeting with 
 Mr. Leigh subsided in the second thought, that, after all, 
 this accident was not an unfortunate one for her schemes. 
 "It is most necessary for that telegram to go immedi 
 ately, and in your own name, for the trunk." And 
 Monny wrote the despatch to the plotter s dictation. 
 Then the latter lot her victim go, trusting for herself to 
 that fortune which favors the bold. 
 
 Only a bold and deeply-laid plot, in truth, could have 
 prevented these lovers from coming to confidence. Even 
 to-night, when Monny came outside the village to lind 
 Mr. Leigh waiting for her there in the falling darkness, 
 the very weight on her 3 T ouug heart, an indefeasible rising 
 sense that he was her true refuge, made her run with such 
 impetuous abandon into his arms, he thought it a puerility 
 in himself to have fancied something strange and disap 
 pointing in his first reception. 
 
 What need to chronicle in detail the days that followed ? 
 It was always the same history, alternations of resei-ve 
 ana effusion, of melancholy, and anon a forced, wild 
 gayety, as the troubled girl perceived that her depression 
 of spirits weighed on her lover. She flew from one to 
 another of these moods with some feverish unrest utterly 
 unlike the sweet beguiling of her old changeful ways; 
 for be sure that the girl " whom nobody ever got tired of, 
 morning, noon, nor night," did not normally diffuse that 
 sense of commotion which make*.* some iridescent feminine 
 natures, for all their charm, a little fatiguing at last in 
 too intimate intercourse. 
 
402 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 No, Monny s lover recognized well that she was in 
 some unwonted state. He supposed it a matter of nerves ; 
 and certainly, for a man who had reached thirty-four all 
 inexperienced in feminine nerves, he had now a tolerably 
 severe initiation. 
 
 Now, while affairs were hanging thus, and Monny still 
 putting off with peculiar evasion the fixing of her mir- 
 riage-day, although the time for Mr. Leigh s permanent 
 departure from the Cape was close at hand, he was pass 
 ing, one afternoon, through the family sitting-room, and 
 stopped to turn over a file of his newspapers (strewn on 
 a table, for Mrs. Doane s reading), to see if his " New- 
 York Times" of four days back might still be there. 
 As it was understood that the dailies might be drawn on 
 for fire-kindling before they reached that age, the desired 
 journal had disappeared ; and Monny stepped out into the 
 kitchen to see if, by chance, it might still be extant in 
 the waste-box. 
 
 "It has gone up the chimney," she said, returning. 
 "Did you wish to see it for something important?" 
 
 "To. look over again the list of The Etolia s pas 
 sengers. It is not given in full in the later papers. 
 Friends of mine, Gen. Bingham and his family, were on 
 that steamer." Mr. Leigh was about to say that lie 
 wished to see if any other of his friends were there ; but 
 Monny cried out breathlessly, "The Binghams on that 
 steamer ? homeward bound ? When is it due ? " 
 
 "It was due several days before I left New York," 
 replied Mr. Leigh, rather puzzled by Monny s tone, 
 which, though agitated, had an expression of relief in it 
 which seemed smgular to him ; for the Atlantic steamer 
 in question was so late, that serious fears had begun to 
 be entertained for its safety. Mr. Leigh assumed that 
 Monny knew this, as the papers every day now made some 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 403 
 
 reference to the missing ship. But the girl had been so 
 absorbed by her personal anxieties, she had scarce looked 
 in the papers for several days past, and was all unaware 
 of this alarm about "The Etolia." And now, as Jenny 
 Ilines came running in from the kitchen with a torn page 
 or two of the destroyed journal, which she had chanced 
 to use for wrapping-paper, Monny slipped out of the 
 room and up-stairs, while Mr. Leigh was looking over 
 the rescued fragment of newspaper, where was found the 
 shipping-news and a list of "The Etolia s " passengers. 
 Not finding Monny when he glanced up from this reading, 
 he went to his study, where he presently heard the girl s 
 door cautiously opened, her soft, swift flight down the 
 stairs ; and anon, from his window, he saw her flitting 
 away like the wind, in the direction of the village. 
 
 Her manner of leaving the house so plainly denoted a 
 wish to be unobserved, the lover made no signal to her ; 
 but musing afresh on the impracticable state into which 
 his betrothed had fallen, when a half -hour or so had 
 passed, he put on his hat, and went out by the same road 
 which she had taken. Not wishing to pursue Monny 
 quite into the village, remembering how shy she was of 
 his escort there the night of his return, he loitered along 
 the way, making little excursions into the waste on either 
 side the road, to pass the time till she should appear. 
 
 Rambling thus, his feet making no echo in the soft, 
 sliding sand, he came to o spot some rods from the high 
 way, where he was startled to hear feminine voices close 
 by, those of Monny and Mrs. Van Cortlandt ! They 
 ivere sitting on the ground, behind a dense little clump of 
 shrub-oaks, over whose roots and stems yie blowing sand 
 bad curiously heaped itself and hardened, forming on one 
 Bide quite a solid wall several feet high. Mr. Leigh knew 
 the place well. He stood astonished at finding these two 
 
404 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 together again, feeling that Mrs. Van Cortlaiidt was very 
 remiss in not having written him a straight apology, a 
 square taking-back of all her charges against Monny, in 
 stead of familiarizing with her in this private way. He 
 did not like it ; and, with an instinctive impulse to take 
 before the widow s eyes the attitude of Monny s betrothed, 
 he was about to step forward, when some words from 
 the girl s own lips transfixed him. She was speaking. in 
 reply to Mrs. Van Cortlandt. What the latter had said 
 was not audible ; but Monny s soft voice had some pene 
 trating quality which made her speech so distinct, Mr. 
 Leigh could but hear. 
 
 "Mrs. Bingham was the only living being who knew 
 all about the affair from beginning to end. She knew 
 that I was engaged to marry him, and that every thing 
 came from that." 
 
 The desert reeled around the man as he heard these 
 words ; then, as Mrs. Van Cortlandt s voice went indis 
 tinctly murmuring on again, he was forced to collect him 
 self so far as to know that this was the last place on 
 earth for him to ask explanation of Monny in, and to 
 retreat unobserved. 
 
 The two women, all unaware of the chance listener 
 who had been so near, soon rose up from the ground 
 where they had sat clown in their talk, and moved slowly 
 on towarls the highway, which they had been approaching 
 by a cross-cut straight over the sandy wastes from Capt. 
 Gawthrop s ; for Monny s sudden run to the village had 
 been to carry to Mrs. Van Cortlandt, who had assumed 
 the personal charge of sending all such letters, a letter 
 which she had hastened to write to Mrs. Bingham so soon 
 as she caught from Mr. Leigh s remarks the gl-id news 
 that the lady was on a steamer already due at New York. 
 The intriguer s task was simplifying wonderfully ; for sho 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 405 
 
 knew, and perceived with joy, that Monny did not yet 
 know that "The Etolia," with Mrs. Bingham on board, 
 was very possibly lost at sea. She walked part of the 
 way home with the girl, exerting herself to the utmost to 
 appear Monny s best friend, quite abstracting from her 
 manner to-night all that element of criticism which she 
 had thought expedient to mingle in it at various times 
 before. 
 
 Fate had marvellously favored this plotting woman 
 from the beginning, but in nothing more than in giving 
 her just such types of character to dupe as the great 
 preacher and the artist-girl. The proverbial simplicity 
 with which the gifted fall into traps which the average 
 mortal would instantly suspect, does not necessarily imply 
 that the former are such dullards in human nature. But 
 an habitual pre-occupation of the mind with other than 
 personal objects probably does not tend to develop a 
 certain small kind of acuteness in detecting character, 
 which may far more abound in people with whom even 
 that involuntary mental current which runs on all day in 
 the head, is chiefly concerned with persons and things 
 visible. And a man like Mr. Leigh, whom man or woman 
 could not approach with detracting little gossip about 
 his friends or acquaintances, undoubtedly loses such 
 as the loss is some of those side-lights upon character 
 which gossip throws. In short, the minister had never 
 discerned aught in the widow to enable him even to im 
 agine that she was capable of playing a false part : still 
 less could the trusting Monny imagine this of the beauti 
 ful woman whom she saw always as standing herself in 
 the shadow of an irremediable woe, and sacredly moved, 
 by the memory of her own lost mate, to help a girl in a 
 strange embarrassment about a lover. 
 
 Nevertheless, this very night, when Mrs. Van Cortlandt 
 
406 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 had left her, and the girl came alone to that little belt of 
 pine-trees by the roadway, where she had met Mr. Leigh 
 on his return to the Cape a few nights before, a singu 
 lar re-action came over her. It is always possible that 
 bare instinct will suddenly rescue a thoroughly truth 
 ful nature from whatever snares of false reasoning have 
 been cast around it, and thus it was now with Monny. 
 The experience was so new, so hateful, to her, of having 
 tilings to hide, secrets which obliged her to steal clan 
 destinely out of the house where her lover was, and think 
 how she could creep back into it again unobserved by 
 him, the mere situation was so intolerable, she suddenly 
 rose up against it as something which she could not bear 
 another day. And with this strong uprising of her heart 
 came a new illumination to her brain. All at once, lilfe 
 a discovery, the idea flashed on her, that she could tell 
 Mr. Leigh the secret which so burdened her, separate 
 from that part of it which Mrs. Van Cortlandt had so 
 frightened her from telling; viz., Kate De Lancey s 
 operations about Gen. Warwick s will. 
 
 " 1 will tell him every thing else," she said to herself, 
 " how I was engaged to Carroll De Lancey, and just how 
 I went with Kate to New Orleans, and about the lost 
 trunk I have sent for : whatever shame and misery it is 
 to me to confess it all, this hiding and concealing is a 
 worse misery. And I will tell him truly that there is 
 something more which I cannot tell him ; that is, the 
 reason why Kate went to New Orleans dressed as a man. 
 I will tell Mr. Leigh I cannot explain that till I have seen 
 Mrs. Bingham, and know if I have a right to tell it, even 
 to him. Mr. Leigh would never pry in such a case : he 
 would not be like me, that silly, silly morning, when I 
 asked him for his thoughts. But the whole story that 
 concerns myself I will tell him from beginning to end : 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 407 
 
 whatever they all say, I will tell him, I will." And with 
 a force of resolve which she had never had before she flew 
 over the homeward way. 
 
 Arrived at the house, she was hurrying over the stairs, 
 going straight for Mr. Leigh s study, when the door of 
 that study opened, and he Spoke from its threshold, 
 i4 Monny, I wish to see you in this room immediately." 
 
 The mere word "Mouny," aside from the strange tone 
 of command in which it was uttered, sent the warm blood 
 back upon the girl s heart. Never had Mr. Leigh called 
 her by that name before ; for, so soon as he had a right to 
 call her by any name more familiar than Miss Rivers, he 
 had begun to call her by that diminutive of his own inven 
 tion, Ana. And now, as she passed through the study- 
 door, he closed it instantly behind her, demanding still, in 
 that strange voice which she seemed not to know, 
 
 4 Were you ever engaged to marry any man before 
 myself? Answer me yes or no." 
 
 "Y-yes I was once engaged a little," gasped 
 the girl ; all the story that had been ready to rush so full 
 and free from her lips choked back before the startling 
 change which had come over her betrothed. 
 
 * The man was your lover? " hoarsely interrogated Mr. 
 Leigh. " I mean you engaged yourself to him, he was 
 your personal choice? " he repeated ; for he was clinging 
 to so desperate a possibility as that an American girl had 
 been affianced by any will but her own. 
 
 " He he was then. I was not quite seventeen." 
 
 As if these words were bayonet-thrusts, the man fell 
 back before them, back to the very opposite wall of the 
 room. Mouny dropped into a chair by the door, for her 
 very limbs failed her for trembling. Mechanically Mr. 
 Leigh followed her movement, sitting down where he was. 
 The width of the room was now between them : oh the 
 
408 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 impassable gulf it seemed to Monny when he spoke 
 again ! 
 
 " And you told me solemnly, with your own lips, but a 
 week ago, that moonlight night when we went together 
 to the beach, that you had never promised yourself to 
 any man before me." 
 
 "No, no! I could never have told you quite that," 
 insisted the girl. U I always was careful not to say ex 
 actly that ; for I remembered the other. I remembered 
 him that night you speak of. He was in my mind when 
 I said what I said was, I had never cared for any man 
 before so so much as for you." 
 
 All the tenets of mental reservation, that Jesuitism, 
 that doctrine of devils, Kenyon Leigh found in these 
 words ; and his voice, his very face, seemed to freeze as 
 he rejoined, 
 
 4 This man in your mind whom you so shaped your 
 words to cover what was his name? " 
 
 44 Carroll De Lancey." 
 
 A perceptible shudder shook the questioner at this 
 name ; but he went on with the tense, iron tone of a man 
 forcing himself to be deliberate, 
 
 " The same man, who, on the morning after that night, 
 in this very room, you told me that you had only the 
 slightest accidental acquaintance with, that you knew him 
 scarcely at all. You said this of a man whose promised 
 wife you once were. Is this true ? Are there two Carroll 
 De Lanceys ? Did you say those words to me that morn 
 ing of the selfsame man who, you now confess, once held 
 your plighted word to marry him?" Still, in a last ag 
 onized reluctance to believe, the man thus iterated and 
 reiterated the same question. He would be answered; 
 and the frightened girl could only answer by a silent 
 affirmative sign. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 409 
 
 At that sign a terrible silence fell in the room, broken at 
 last by Monny, with one more struggling effort to explain, 
 "I it was all a romantic fancy, which many things 
 helped on : I painted his picture unknown to him." 
 
 So she had painted another man s picture, even as she 
 had painted his. That sacredest ineffable memory of his 
 life was but a rehearsal. So thought the lover who had 
 been the original of the Knight-Templar s picture ; and, 
 with some inarticulate sound as of one suffocating, be 
 and was gone from the room. 
 
410 
 
 KEVEBEND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVH. 
 
 MAN, naturalists tell us, is the only animal in the 
 entire range of creation which abuses the female of 
 its species. Might we dare suggest, as one possible cause 
 of this bad eminence, that man is the only reasoning ani 
 mal, and that reason in the masculine and the feminine 
 head follows such opposite lines, there is a chance of 
 more exasperating collision between the human male and 
 female than Mr. and Mrs. Wildcat in spotted skins are 
 ever tried with ? 
 
 Seriously, from that lower strata of society where man 
 verily behaves himself, to the wife who angers him, worse 
 than any tiger in his den, maltreating her with a violence 
 which he shows to no other creature (as is pointed out 
 by some English writers of the day, speaking especially 
 of the performances of the British " rough " in this line), 
 from these deeps up to the highest social air, does the 
 peculiar intensity which marks the conjugal quarrel arise 
 wholly, as our indignant English reviewers declare, from 
 man s inherent idea of woman as his bond-slave? Or is 
 it not partly due, at least, to this cause, that the two 
 sexes, once brought into any disputing attitude, have a 
 genuine difficulty in understanding each other? 
 
 Certainly, as to the betrothed lovers whose tale we tell, 
 the man had now come to abuse in his mind, to do a 
 great injustice there to the maiden who had been his idol ; 
 and this state of things Mrs. Van Cortlandt, with all her 
 plots, would have been utterly powerless to bring about, 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 411 
 
 but for the fact that the pair had as man and woman 
 very unlike ways of looking at things. Yet this was a 
 pair united by so many affinities of taste and character, it 
 would be said, at least by the progressives of our day, 
 that the disturbing element which there is in difference of 
 sex would be sure to disappear. But, lo ! on the very first 
 ? icstion of importance which arose between them (and 
 Ilia! a question so elemental to human conduct as speak 
 ing the truth) , the man took an intensely masculine view, 
 t lie woman an intensely feminine one ; and the two were in 
 the blindest collision. For the shock with which Kenyon 
 Leigh had gone out from the presence of his young be 
 trothed had all fallen on him with that first discovery that 
 she had concealed from him a matter which he could not 
 conceive how any truthful being, man or woman, could 
 conceal; viz., the fact of an old betrothal on making a 
 new one. lie knew that if he himself had ever, in any 
 sort of outward way, stood as a suitor to Mrs. Van Cort- 
 landt, or any other woman, he would have told Monny of 
 it at once. And while he had had no disposition to be 
 over-prying into the question of the young girl s "little 
 fancies " among her numerous adorers of the past, if any 
 such fancy of hers had ever gone so far into the region of 
 actualities as a marriage engagement, he would have con 
 sidered it her absolute duty to tell him of it unasked. 
 This tenacity of his feeling that an engagement had some 
 claim to be reported beyond any unacknowledged love- 
 affair, was certainly not because as a lover he placed the 
 mere effigy before the life of sentiment (no lover ever 
 did that) : but he had that masculine respect for fact" 
 which we have spoken of in a former chapter ; and an 
 engagement was a kind of fact to him, a positive stage, 
 as it were, in affairs of the heart. That is, he uncon 
 sciously reasoned about a promise to marry as about anj 
 
412 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 other contract or bargain ; to wit, that it had external lia 
 bilities, had, therefore, by the very constitution of the 
 actual world, a necessity to be understood. These truths, 
 self-evident to the man, were a class of truths so unper- 
 ceived by the girl, that the merely prudential reason which 
 there was for confessing every thing to Mr. Leigh, that is, 
 the likelihood of these strange adventures of hers coming 
 to his knowledge from without, had never once occurred to 
 her. No, the only reasons she had ever seen for telling 
 Mr. Leigh about Carroll De Lancey at all were very subli 
 mated ones, a wish to be utterly true, not to keep back 
 even a passing fancy that she had once had for another 
 man. Naturally, reasons of this strain could only act on 
 her in very exalted moments, and even then not with that 
 steadfast compelling which would have been in a clear 
 mental conviction of duty. 
 
 Now the man, having no stronger mental conviction on 
 earth than that it was a folly, as well as a wrong, to attempt 
 to hide the actualities of one s history, inevitably assumed 
 that guilt of some sort was behind Mouny s concealment. 
 Indeed, when a man makes elaborate efforts to hide any 
 thing he has done, he has generally clone something which 
 he means to lie about through thick and thin, aware that 
 it will take all the resources of tying successfully to cover 
 up facts in this world. So, although all that terrible story 
 which Mrs. Van Cortlandt had set coiled like a serpent 
 in Kenyon Leigh s consciousness, to bide its time there, 
 could not fasten itself yet on a lover s belief, one deadly 
 fang of doubt in Monny was planted in his breast the very 
 moment those few overheard words of hers in the desert 
 revealed to him that she had been engaged before, and 
 had not told him of it. 
 
 If the man placed an exaggerated emphasis on this 
 matter, so, also, on the gui s side, it was all an exaggera- 
 
A KKVKEEND IDOL. 413 
 
 tion of womanly sensibility which had caused her conceal- 
 mont: and probably neither of these brings could have 
 been quite the man and woman that they were without 
 being liable to such exaggerations, which were in the direc 
 tion of their best, their most distinctive, virtues as man 
 and woman. That soul of integrity in affairs, trustworthi- 
 IDCFS like a rock, which belonged to the man, probably 
 could not have so distinguished him but for the fact that 
 certain principles of action were so ingrain with him he 
 did not consciously reason about them at all, did not 
 conceive that any right-intcntioned being could be blind 
 to those principles. l>ut the most right-intentioned Mouny 
 wax blind to them, did have another point of view : 
 while the man s vision took in the outwardness of things, 
 she saw only their inwardness. Integrity towards a lover 
 was to her all a matter of the heart; and conscious that 
 her heart was not less, but even more, whole towards Mr. 
 Leigh because of the man that was before him, she did 
 not see that her old bond to that man, righteously broken 
 and long outworn as it was, still hud been, and, like other 
 facts, had made positive waymarks in her history, that 
 her future husband needed to understand. 
 
 The feminine way of looking at things, as we have be 
 fore suggested, has, we think, its own great worth in life 
 and society ; but the masculine way would certainly seem 
 the one best adapted for the management of business, of 
 public affairs. And, if education might somewhat ap 
 proximate these differences, it still remains, as women 
 suffragists seem to forget, that the essential force and 
 value of every being lies never in the line of its bor 
 rowed qualities, but always in that of its primary, its most 
 instinctive ones. 
 
 Well, to return to our lovers : that uulikeness of nature 
 which had been their mutual attraction had eertaiulv 
 
414 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 become their dark division now. The morrow came before 
 Mr. Leigh again saw his betrothed ; then, knowing of 
 course, that the rending subject which had come between 
 them could not be dropped there, he knocked at the door 
 of her studio. 
 
 Ah ! when she opened it, he knew that gone forevoi was 
 that morning when he could turn his back on this girl at 
 the voice of reason. Reason told him to-day that she had 
 lied to him ; yet, at the first sight of her troubled young 
 face, every thing went down before the one need to be 
 reconciled to her, his darling. 
 
 But Monnj^ would not take the woman s advantage. 
 She saw that there was one thing in the world which the 
 strong man before her was not strong enough to bear : he 
 could not bear her tears. And, whether it was that old 
 feeling of hers, that she would not have his love without 
 his approval, she choked back the tears, and so restrained 
 her trembling that to the eye she seemed suddenly to take 
 the coldness, and almost the immobility, of a statue. 
 This forced calm looked to the man like the puttiug-on of 
 a mask of impenetrability ; and his melting mood so far 
 congealed, that he began, with a touch of the imperative 
 i/i his voice, 
 
 1 i That young man whom you were once to marry 
 Carroll De Lancey is somewhat known to me by repu 
 tation. Stories have come to my ears about him" (he 
 could not bring himself to say to Monny s face "about 
 you") "which give me a reason, a right, to ask where, 
 in what places, you were ever with him. Did he visit you 
 ut your home, your uncle s house? " 
 
 ! No : my uncle and aunt were in Europe then. I was 
 at school in New York. That is the only place where I 
 ever saw him except in West Point, at a bail there. 
 Thitt was where I first met him, lie was Very hand- 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 415 
 
 some he was wonderful for beauty. Yon noticed it your 
 self : you said, 4 What a handsome young caballero! 
 when you first saw his picture. That was his picture 
 which you found in my old school portfolio. And he 
 was so accomplished besides : even the young men at West 
 Point admired him immensely. He spoke foreign lan 
 guages so perfectly, and danced and sang beautifully. He 
 sang to me the night after the ball, when we went in a 
 moonlight party on the river : he sang, Drink to me only 
 with thine eyes. 
 
 Every syllable of that beautiful old song, thrilling with 
 love s divine exaggerations, shot through the heart of the 
 man who heard these praises of his predecessor which 
 poor Monny poured forth in her simplicity, striving to 
 show some cause for that early infatuation of hers, fear 
 ing always, that, to those who knew him only of late years, 
 perhaps the dissolute Carroll De Lancey showed no traces 
 of that young splendor which had attracted her ; and 
 what, then, could Mr. Leigh think of her standards about 
 suitors ? 
 
 Mr. Leigh s thoughts were a whirlwind ; but supreme^t 
 of all rose some nameless, passionate torture of the 
 lover s iealousy. Yes, with the intolerable sense of one 
 belated, wno has overslept the hour, the mature man sud 
 denly saw all the years behind him saw all knowledge, 
 duties, all labors that are done under the sun burn up 
 as the mere stubble of life in one consuming desire to 
 have been beforehand with that dancing, singing strip 
 ling, into whose lot and nature the great preacher could 
 wish this moment to have been born. Even Monny s 
 little jest of the other day, " Stay down in your chair, 
 and make yourself a little smaller, whon I come in," 
 came back now to this least self-conscious of men with 
 the stabbing thought that she saw him as an ungainly 
 
416 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Behemoth beside the splendid young Antinous whoso 
 praises she could not forbear to his own very face. 
 
 Why had she ever broken with that lover? This in 
 ward question he at length put aloud, in some shape, to 
 Monny. 
 
 "I I found that he did not truly love me. And I 
 grew tired of him myself before right there in New 
 Orleans." 
 
 " New Orleans? " Mr. Leigh repeated the fatal words 
 with a sharp passionateness of outbreak. "And just 
 now New York and West Point were the only places 
 where you ever saw Carroll De Lancey ! In one grain of 
 mercy to me, or prudence for yourself, will you begin to 
 speak the truth to me? " 
 
 To hear words, tones, like these, from Mr. Leigh s lips, 
 so shook his young betrothed, she could only gasp, "I 
 I had forgotten about New Orleans There is some 
 one coming into the yard to see you." Monny was 
 standing now by the window. 
 
 And directly, indeed, a member of the household came 
 up the stairs to summon Mr. Leigh below, and the inter 
 view was for a moment interrupted. 
 
 Returning to the studio as soon as his caller had left, 
 he was astounded to find that Monny had snatched the 
 occasion to quit the room and the house. 
 
A BE V EKES D IDOL. 417 
 
 CHAPTER XXVin. 
 
 THE man s way of looking at things, the mere pies- 
 sure of her lover s mind on her own the moment it 
 ceased to be sympathetic, inevitably frightened the girl 
 whose bewildered lluctuations we traee. She did not 
 even know the point where his wrath began, did not yet 
 perceive that it was her concealment which lingered him : 
 it was still her idea that the bare fact of her having been 
 engaged to a young man like Carroll De Lancey shocked 
 him as a blemish on her delicacy. How ever, then, could 
 she find face to tell him of that indelicate journey tc New 
 Orleans? She fled. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlaudt saw her rushing past the Gawthrop 
 house in the briefest time after the events of the last 
 chapter, and hurried into the street to intercept her with, 
 44 Where are you going? " 
 
 14 Home to my uncle and aunt." 
 
 44 Not directly, surely?" replied the widow; for on 
 foot, and in her delicate morning-dress, the girl scarcely 
 suggested a railway-traveller. 
 
 " No. I knew the train had gone. But I am going 
 to the station to telegraph, to find out just where my 
 tumt is, that 1 may join her at once. I cannot wait for 
 letters I cannot \v:ut for any thing." 
 
 44 Come to my room, and tell me what is the matter," 
 said the widow ; and she drew the excited girl into the 
 house. 
 
 44 What is the matter? " she repeated there. 
 
418 A KEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 " Ob ! Mr. Leigh has heard in some way about my 
 engagement to Carroll De Lancey I don t know how 
 
 it seems to be in the air," moaned Monny. " And he 
 takes it so so hard, I dare not tell him the rest with 
 my own lips. And I was going to tell him the whole of 
 it last night, even without his asking me, even against 
 your advice, Mrs. Van Cortlandt. But I dare not tell 
 him now myself ; and I shall ask my uncle and aunt to 
 tell him. That is why I want to go to them right away, 
 
 to my own blood and kin," said the wounded girl, 
 quivering with a strange, agonized sense of wanting home 
 protection and against 1dm. 
 
 " You say your friends are travelling?" quietly asked 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt. 
 
 " Yes, just now. They have been at Lenox for 
 weeks ; but aunt Helen s last letter, a day or two ago, 
 said they were just starting for a trip in the Middle 
 States." 
 
 "You would not wish to alarm your friends, to bring 
 them suddenly here?" suggested the plotter. 
 
 44 1 mean to go to them, not to bring them here. Aunt 
 Helen mentioned several places where they were to stop. 
 I can certainly find out, by telegraphing to all of them, 
 just where they are now." 
 
 The widow s swift thought, electrized by the conscious 
 ness that this one day probably held all her chances of 
 success or failure, traversed an intricate maze of strategy, 
 before she said, 
 
 "I will go right over to the telegraph-office with you, 
 my dear." 
 
 Hither Mrs. Van Cortlandt went, and easily enough 
 prolonged through the entire day the business of finding 
 out by the telegraph-wires that the Slabwells were at a 
 mountain-house in the Catskills. She was careful not 
 
A REVEKEND IDOL. 419 
 
 only to keep Monny with her in the village, out to send 
 word to the Doaue house where she was, well aware 
 that nothing could look more suspicious to Mr. Leigh 
 now than that the girl should be thus closeted with her 
 accuser. 
 
 Then, as the hours of the afternoon wore on, she made 
 two deeply-planned moves. First she despatched by 
 Tonson, all unknown to Monny, a letter to Mr. Leigh, 
 and, directly in wake of this letter, sent to Mrs. Doaue a 
 house the lost trunk, which had arrived that morning at 
 the Cape-Cod depot, from Jackson, Miss. 
 
 Thus, to the appalled man waiting in the Doane house 
 
 appalled first by Monny s deliberate flight from his 
 inquiries, and then by the still greater shock of learning 
 that she had gone to Mrs. Van Cortlandt came a letter 
 like the following, which, with the fierce eagerness of the 
 long day s suspense, he tore open and read : 
 
 "REV. KENYOX LEIGH, Notwithstanding the tone of your 
 last letter to me, it becomes my difficult duty to write to you 
 again; for I must state, that, during your recent absence, Miss 
 Rivers confessed to me with her own lips her identity with that 
 young girl of the New-Orleans scandal, a fact absolutely certain 
 to me before beyond all human possibility of mistake. 
 
 " There is now one especial item connected with that journey 
 "whicu I must refer to. When Miss Rivers fled from her New- 
 York boarding-school in male attire, she cut off her hair (to per 
 fect her disguise), and threw it into a trunk, which was lost on 
 her journey; that is, left, forgotten, at the depot in Jackson, Miss., 
 
 the place where the runaway pair openly took the names of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Carroll De Lancey. As this trunk contained not only 
 the hair, but her male disguise (a cadet s uniform), and other 
 fatal proofs of her misadventure, she has been endeavoring during 
 tho past week to get it buck into her possession, and to-day it 
 has arrived in this very town. I hope that there are no more 
 quite such ruinous witnesses as this trunk scattered abroad 
 against h er. But some one surely should look after this unfortu 
 nate girl in her present excited state, that she do not compromis 
 
420 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 nerself unnecessarily. In this view of duty I have kept her with 
 me to-day, having found her going in wild agitation to the tele 
 graph-office, in the idea of communicating with her uncle and 
 aunt about this past disgrace of hers, which to this day she has 
 kept a profound secret from them. Nevertheless, with these 
 extraordinary talents for concealment, there is blended such a 
 vein of childish heedlessness, I feared, as I have said, to leave her 
 to herself to-day. 
 
 " I hope that I may lay down here this most unhappy part 
 towards yourself, which fate has so strangely thrust me into. Of 
 course, could I have known in the beginning that it was yourself, 
 and not the Roosevelts, who needed to he informed of Miss Rivers s 
 wild past, I should have felt it impossible to discharge myself the 
 duty of informer; but, knowing what I did of the girl, it was 
 naturally inconceivable to me, either that a clergyman should 
 think of her as a wife, or that she herself should desire such a 
 position. Although now, when I reflect that a clergyman, being 
 ruined in his profession as no other man is by a domestic 
 scandal, can never afford to repudiate the guiltiest wife, I can see 
 that powerful considerations of policy and prudence might impei 
 Miss Rrvers to marry a minister, aware, as she must have been, 
 that the dark secret in her history was always liable to be dis 
 covered sooner or later by a husband. 
 
 " Respectfully yours, 
 
 "ADELAIDE VAN COBTLANDT." 
 
 Decidedly Mrs. Van Cortlandt knew where to strike. 
 The last words of this horrible letter did more than any 
 thing else in it to nail into the man s breast a conviction 
 of the possible truth of it all. He had never ceased to 
 wonder, with love s own humility, we might add, with 
 that especial humility of the man who loves a woman 
 much younger than himself, that he had been able to 
 win this young heart for his own. This was the secret of 
 it all, then : she had found it prudent to marry a minister. 
 
 And need we say that corroborative memories had 
 rushed hideously on his mind at every point in this letter ? 
 The cut-off hair lost in a trunk when she was travelling 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 421 
 
 could he forget how he had heard of that from Monny a 
 own lips? That morning when lie had pulled out before 
 her very faee Caroll De Lancey s picture, the statue-like 
 calm which fell on her, the winsome little appeal to him 
 with which she broke out of it, "I have learned lately a 
 little to cook" was that her talent for concealment, 
 mixed with childishness? Yea, that sacred midnight when 
 she had flung herself sobbing on his breast, and cried, 
 4 Take me into your church!" was that a childish 
 burst of repenting ? Heavens ! had not the minister seen 
 transgressors before trying to shrive themselves, in some 
 more or less fantastic way, for their unconfessed sins 
 to join the church on the stairs? 
 
 k And I saw woman, that she is like a snare, or some 
 such other object:" these words of old Gregory Thau- 
 maturgus, or some such other object among those ancho 
 rite priests whom he had hidden from Mouny s reading, 
 dinned through his brain now as he stood paralyzed with 
 a sense of some craft in the girl which the falsest of male 
 beings could never attain to, some fathomless duplicity 
 which only a creature who so mixed her very guile with 
 grace could show. 
 
 And now, in the wild whirl of these thoughts, he was 
 aware of a wagon driven up to the house, a noise about 
 the front door ; and, feverishly expectant at every sound 
 from without, he stepped to the head of the front stair 
 case. A man, admitted by Jenny Hines, was hoisting a 
 trunk up the stairs : it was the familiar driver of the 
 depot baggage- wagon. 
 
 "Miss Ivivers s trunk," he said, doffing his hat to Mr. 
 Leigh as he reached the upper landing of the stairs, where 
 he paused, resting the trunk endwise, waiting for this 
 inmate of the house to suggest the precise spot where it 
 should be left. Mr. Leigh replied to this tacit inquiry by 
 
422 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 pusl ing open the door of Monny s studio; and the man, 
 depositing the trunk in the middle of that room, departed. 
 
 The much tossed-about piece of baggage was scrawled 
 all over with railroad hieroglyphics ; but one crimson card, 
 printed with the picture of a hotel, and the words, " liar- 
 court House, Jackson, Miss.," this hotel-card had kept 
 its place through every thing, and glared on the minister 
 now like a blood-red stain. 
 
 He walked round and round the thing as if spell* 
 bound, never imagining that any deeper agency than acci 
 dent had so timed the arrival of this fatal witness against 
 Monny. No : that she should dig this trunk up from its 
 five-years hiding in the State of Mississippi, especially 
 to destroy that black testimony against herself which 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt had declared it to contain, and then 
 allow chance to tumble it down at his very feet, this 
 would be only another specimen of that infantile heedless- 
 ness and far-reaching secrecy which had so marked all the 
 girl s course. 
 
 While the man was torn on the rack of these thoughts, 
 the intriguer in the Gawthrop House was addressing her 
 self to the most critical step of all ; that is, directly after 
 her secret sending-off of the trunk, she turned her con 
 versation with Monny into an entirely new channel. First 
 she informed the girl, what as yet the latter had heard no 
 rumor of, that " The Etolia," with the Binghams on board, 
 was believed to be lost at sea. 
 
 This was too great a tragedy for Monny to remember 
 its bearings upon her own personal fate, until Mrs. Van 
 Cortlandt said, with a singular accent, 
 
 4 Most unfortunate for you, Miss Rivers, that the only 
 original witness to the truth of your account of the New- 
 Orleaps journey should be cut off in this way. It leaves 
 you so sadly exposed to the world s suspicion, it is neces- 
 
A KEYEKENI) IDOL. 423 
 
 sary, of course, for you to confess every thing to your 
 aunt and uncle. But if you had only confessed to them 
 at the time of the affair, five years ago ! How very 
 singular that you did not do it ! If you had only told 
 them every thing then, it would have been counted as a 
 considerable proof of your honesty." 
 
 44 Honesty ? " repeated Monny in a dazed way, " con 
 siderable proof? I I think I do not quite understand 
 you." 
 
 44 1 mean," deliberately replied the intriguer, u that 
 your own story of that journey to New Orleans will be 
 pronounced by the world too extremely wild and improba 
 ble to be true, a quite impossible fable, in short. It 
 will be said that the probable thing is that you made that 
 iourney alone with Carroll De Lancey." 
 
 "Probable that I travelled alone like that with a 
 young man? Who will say that was probable of me?" 
 slowly repeated the astounded girl, a red flame beginning 
 to burn up in her pure cheek. Still it was too impossible 
 for her yet to conceive just all that these insinuations 
 meant. 
 
 44 Every one who knows life will say it," coolly replied 
 the widow. 44 Carroll De Laneey s repute as a young 
 man of pleasure, the fact that he was your fiance, every 
 circumstance, the world will say, points to the conclusion 
 that it was a runaway love-affair." 
 
 44 Why, there was not an atom of love-affair about it," 
 Monny burst in. 4 Carroll De Lancey never stirred out 
 of West Point till Kate and I got to New Orleans : he 
 had not the slightest thing to do with our going there 
 ecurybwly knew it." 
 
 44 Will 3*ou name the persons who make up this every 
 body? " calmly rejoined Mrs. Van Cortlandt. 
 
 44 Mrs. Bingham, she knew it well, and her maid Jane, 
 and Kate and all of us," cried Monny breathlessly. 
 
424 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 " Miss De Lancey having died years ago, as you tell 
 me, and the maid Jane dying at the very time of the 
 affair," continued the widow with an iron accent, "and 
 Mrs. Bingham now dead in all human probability, what 
 being is alive to confirm your tale ? I wish myself, Miss 
 Rivers, (o believe in you and to befriend you. But I am 
 speaking to you of the outside world ; and very strange 
 stories, to which the witnesses are all dead, are not 
 credited by that." 
 
 44 Carroll De Lancey is not dead! he the chief 
 witness," almost shrieked the girl, as she began to see 
 at last the situation which this wily enemy would show her 
 as her own. "He will swear to the truth of every syl 
 lable I have said about that journey ; and his word can be 
 taken by the whole world, the word of a gentleman. 
 He had no morals ; but he was a gentleman, he would not 
 lie." 
 
 u Precisely, if he is a gentleman," responded the widow, 
 in her quiet, steoly tones, " he would lie in your case, 
 the case which the world will believe to be yours. Do 
 you not know that the one exceptional case in which a 
 gentleman is allowed, nay, commanded, to lie, is to save 
 (before the public) the honor of a woman who has lost 
 her honor for him? Carroll De Lancey is worse than no 
 witness for you ; since, if he were to swear to the truth of 
 your tale, the world would only believe he was ingeniously 
 lying to screen you, as the code of a gentleman would 
 oblige him to lie." 
 
 The woman of the world shook her over the abyss at 
 last, this Puritan girl, bred up in modesty from her 
 cradle. The one virtue in which that unvirtuous lover of 
 her girlhood stood immaculate the word of a gentleman 
 would only beat her down the deeper, if she grasped at 
 it u> save her ! The victim of this last terrible argument 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 426 
 
 on woman s peculiar position in life sat as if death-struck 
 for a space ; then at last, stretching out her hands with a 
 blind, sick movement, she gasped faintly, "I must go 
 back back to him. Why have you let me waste the 
 time so/ she murmured helplessly, "to-day and all the 
 days gone by, without explaining to me before? When I 
 Lave ro cause to see my uncle and aunt, or anybody on 
 raith. except him. 1 
 
 44 What are you going to say to him? "said the in 
 triguer, laying a quick hand on the girl s arm, startled by 
 something in the white intensity of her face. 
 
 " That I release him forever what else? Do you 
 suppose that I would many him, join to a name like 
 Ti/.s- my name, if the most outside being in all the outside 
 world could ever whisper that it was not -a good name? 
 Let me go! " The widow strove yet to detain her: but 
 it was as if she had seized a whirlwind ; the desperate 
 maiden broke from her grasp, and ran out of the house. 
 
 " The only correct actions are those which require no 
 explanation and no apology : these words out of Auer- 
 bach rang in the ears of this hunted girl on her fugitive 
 way with that sound of absolute and awful truth with 
 which mere half-truths uttered in an aphoristic way 
 impose on a young mind. She felt banned for ever and 
 ever from marrying Mr. Leigh, although her worst con 
 jectures, as she sped back over the old road to tell him so, 
 still stopped far short of any such horror as that he was 
 believing, or ever would believe, what Mrs. Van Cortlandt 
 had just told her the general world would believe, about 
 her connection with Carroll De Lancey. 
 
 How she reached Mrs. Doane s she did not know, only 
 that, climbing again the old stairs, her heart once more 
 stood still at Mr. Leigh s voice calling peremptorily to her, 
 tlu a time from her own threshold, " Conic in here!" 
 
426 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Like a blown leaf she fluttered into the studio to see and 
 recognize the lost trunk standing there in the middle of 
 the room. With a low, frightened cry, as feeling herself 
 pursued by fate, she stood motionless, turning deathly 
 pale. 
 
 It seemed the very aspect of mortal guilt ; and every 
 emotion of the lover was swamped in the primal wrath of 
 man deceived by woman with the last deceit. He drew 
 her up to the trunk with such a grasp on her arm, the 
 strong man in his agony, that she would have cried out 
 in the flesh, if in the flesh she had any longer had the 
 power to feel. 
 
 44 Open that trunk, and show me what is in it ! " 
 
 Her shaking hands made some helpless sign that she 
 had no key, and with a thrust or two of the man s 
 foot, the lid of the trunk (it was a slight packing-trunk) 
 flew in pieces, and the contents fell out. They fell out, 
 the long-severed golden curls, the cadet s uniform, the 
 crumpled, yellowed ball-dress. 
 
 He plunged his hand into the heap of shining tresses, 
 and felt them twine round his fingers as he held them on 
 high. "You cut this hair from your head for a certain 
 journey to New Orleans, five years ago, when you wore 
 these things? " he said, indicating the suit of male clothes 
 with a shudder. He paused, compelling an answer ; and 
 the quivering lips shaped some inarticulate " Yes." 
 
 1 In this disguise of a boy you travelled from New 
 York to Jackson, Miss., where you threw these clothes 
 into this trunk," he reiterated, "and took openly the 
 name of a wife of Mrs. Carroll De Lancey?" Again 
 he paused, forcing an answer. And what could she answer 
 but that helpless " Yes." 
 
 " And you intended to hide this, and marry me ! Great 
 Godt" 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 427 
 
 She reeled heavily backward at these words 01 did 
 he fling her from him like ail outcast creature, whilt his 
 GITV reproaches, like some deadly hail, went beating on 
 IKT head? A moment longer the white terror of her face 
 was still uplifted, with wild, asking eyes fixed on his ; 
 then, with some indescribable action of a slain thing, she 
 fell forward, her head dropped upon the wall-table piled 
 with the old school portfolios, her face hidden from sight ; 
 nor did she speak, or stir, or make one sign, until he left 
 her. 
 
 All had passed in a few swift moments ; and in a few 
 moments more Kenyon Leigh left the house, and the 
 evening train carried him from Cape Cod. 
 
428 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 WOMEN, in judging of character, rely supremely on 
 their intuitions : when these speak strongly, all 
 contradictory evidence of a merely external kind goes 
 with them for nought. Thus the utmost ingenuity of 
 calumny would have been powerless to make Monny Rivers 
 believe evil of Keuyon Leigh : there was no weapon in 
 the whole arsenal of lies which could ever have slain her 
 faith in him as his had been slain in her. She knew this : 
 hence she did not ask how overwhelming might have been 
 the evidence on which he had come to believe her a fallen 
 girl, that he could believe it on any evidence which 
 mortal lips could bring was a blow under which she fell 
 dumb as death. As to those perfectly automatic answers 
 which she had made to his fierce inquiries over the trunk v 
 if she remembered them at all, it was to remember that 
 belief in her guilt had gone beforehand with him, or he 
 would never have put those questions to her as he did. 
 
 This, alas ! was true. And, before accusing her of mad 
 folly in allowing her lover to depart with that monstrous 
 lie which had been forced on his belief all uncontradicted, 
 it must be remembered, that, as women see things, she had 
 110 proof of her innocence to offer him ; for he had been 
 able to reject what to her was the most infallible of all 
 proofs, viz., the witness that should have been in his own 
 heart that the things she was accused of were impossible 
 to her. To find that this inner witness was not there was 
 a discovery for which nothing of all that had 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 429 
 
 between Mr. Leigh and herself since their misunderstand 
 ing bewail, had in the least prepared her. It meant 
 something more to her than the destruction of all hci 
 personal happiness on earth : she could have faced that 
 doom. She knew that human beings had been entangled 
 before in dark nets of circumstantial evidence from which 
 they could not free themselves, so that they had suffered, 
 even unto death, for crimes of which they were innocent 
 as angels. If the lot had fallen on her to be one of those 
 h ipless victims (and she believed that it had, when she 
 came back to free Mr. Leigh from his engagement to her), 
 it would only be one of the terrible mysteries of this earth, 
 mysteries which did not necessarily reach beyond it. 
 Such a fate could conceivably be borne, hoping for the 
 eternity which would show the innocence that could not be 
 proved in time. But the horror which froze her soul 
 when she found that not the hearsay world, but her own 
 lover, could believe that unspeakable ill of her, was no 
 such finite thing : it blackened beyond the gates of death, 
 into all worlds, all lives which could conceivably be lived 
 by the spirits of men and women. They were not alike : 
 all her love-story had run its varying round to end at last 
 in this most awful confirmation of the fear which hail 
 vaguely shadowed its beginning. 
 
 Night fell in the little room ; but the crushed girl had no 
 f*onse of time save that once she grew aware of some stir 
 below stairs, which reached up to her with the tidings that- 
 one of Mrs. Doaue s sick grandchildren (in the family 
 where Susannah was gone) was dead, and that the old 
 lady would like to go back with the messenger who 
 brought the news (he came in a wagon) ; the bereaved 
 family living only about fifteen miles awny. M< n:iy, 
 whose only remaining consciousness was a desire- l<> ! 
 alone, and to be asked no questions about Mr. 
 
430 A REVEREND IDO *. 
 
 roused herself to go down, and urge Mrs. Doane to take 
 this journey to her daughter. So Mrs. Doane, feeling 
 more free to go because of Mr. Leigh s departure, she 
 was not in the house when he went, and supposed that he 
 had been suddenly called to New York for affairs con 
 nected with his parish, made some hasty arrangements 
 for the care of the house in her absence, and was driven 
 off in the wagon. Then Monny was alone. 
 
 The minister rode night and day on his search for 
 Carroll De Lancey. To find that young man, and marry 
 him to Monny, was the sole objective point remaining to 
 him in existence. Beyond that, nothing was defined, 
 except that he had done with preaching. As a minister 
 he had but one more word to say, and it was, " I give 
 up my commission : the problem of evil is deeper than I 
 can fathom." If there was no truth in woman, there was 
 no hope for man, no hope in all the life of humanity. 
 He was right in this conviction. 
 
 He went to New York to find that Carroll De Lancey 
 was in Baltimore, and to Baltimore to learn that he was 
 back again in New York. But in the latter city he at last 
 laid hands on the young man. He found him in elegant 
 hotel apartments, and at an hour of the night when Mr. 
 Carroll (who had just returned to his rooms after some 
 revel) was wont to be, as of old, and much oftener than 
 of old, flown with wine. The splendid beauty of this 
 Southern Antinous, the singular grace of his bearing, was 
 only marred, not obliterated yet, by his reckless life ; and, 
 recognizing at once the original of Monny s romantic 
 picture, the visitor s first sensation was a devouring im 
 pulse to spring on the young man, and strangle him as his 
 rival the natural man was far from dead in this min 
 ister. 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 431 
 
 On his side young De Lancey stood staring, through 
 his mist of inebriety, :it UK imperious stranger who made 
 such a volcauic irruption into his rooms past midnight. 
 
 "Doused if he doesn t look like his Eminence of St. 
 Ancient s! Protestant Eminence, with no toggery," he 
 begun to mutter to himself. Mr. Carroll s education 
 al-road had all been in Catholic schools ; and the imposing 
 nvtor of St. Ancient s, who was too distinguished a man 
 not to be known by sight to young De Lancey, suggested 
 to the latter s drink-befogged brain a Romish cardinal. 
 " AVhat will your Grace have of me?" he asked, with a 
 salute of the politest deference. 
 
 " Such miserable reparation as you can make, robber 
 and villain!" thundered the accuser. "The fulfilment 
 of the marriage-promise you made years ago to " 
 
 He paused ; for he could not bring himself to utter 
 Monny s name here. 
 
 4 k Marriage-promises are not my style, broken 
 ly answered the young Bacchant, steadying himself by 
 the mantel. A veritable Bacchant of old fable he looked 
 to the minister, some vision out of those days when 
 conscienceless creatures laughed in an endless sunshine, 
 took untroubled the things which seemed to them good ; 
 when scruples were not, nor right and wrong yet named ; 
 when nought was honor or dishonor ; " when yet there was 
 no fear of Jove." 
 
 " Never promised to marry but one girl in my life," 
 ho young man went on ; " and she broke it off, not I " 
 
 " Liar! " hoarsely interrupted the accuser. 
 
 The young Southerner s face, through all his intoxica 
 tion, flushed angrily as he cried, 
 
 " Don t give that word to me, Eminence, or no Kmi 
 nence ! I tell you, never was engaged but once ; and 
 tiras to a Puritan girl, by Jove! And Vr confounded 
 
432 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 relations broke it off. She had a bourgeois uncle, none 
 of her blood, but a kind of guardian uncle by marriage, 
 a regular Yankee peddler, psalm-singer," declared the 
 young aristocrat, his lively memory of the plebeian style 
 of Mr. Slabwell, and the furious moral drubbing: which 
 he had administered to him, leading to this rather mixed 
 description of a man in whom the psalm-singing quality 
 had decidedly died out. "The bourgeois Puritan! To 
 suppose, because I took my i;ttle fling here and there, 
 that I shouldn t know what was due to Monny Rivers 
 shouldn t treat her as a gentleman treats his " 
 
 "Did you treat her like a gentleman, that mother 
 less school-girl ? cried the other ; and in a storm of 
 indignation he poured out that runaway story as he had 
 heard it. 
 
 Staring with amazement, the young reveller heard, his 
 potations beginning to clear a little from his brain with 
 the successive shocks of surprise which this astounding 
 visitor caused him. 
 
 "Liar yourself !" he found breath to retort at last 
 u or whatever villain got up such an abominable slander 
 as that ! Confounded fool he must be about women to 
 try that sort of lie on a name like Monuy Rivers. A 
 girl," he said, with some aerial motions of the hand 
 which indescribably recalled Monny and her ways, "a 
 girl that } T OU can be about as familiar with as you can 
 with a bird on a tree. That s what a man wants for his 
 wife, by Jove ! whosoever he may go larking with. She 
 was to have been my wife," Mr. De Lancey broke out 
 afresh, and with more soberness than he had yet spoken ; 
 "and, by Jove ! no man shall insult her in my presence 
 by asking whether she travelled alone with me day and 
 night, putting up at hotels. I ll have a gentleman s sat 
 isfaction for that .insult to the inuoceutest girl thai ovr 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 433 
 
 lived. Stand off, and defend yourself, sir!" And the 
 last of the cavaliers pulled out a brace of revolvers. 
 
 There was a genuineness in this outbreak, an unmis 
 takable accent of respect in all the tone in which the 
 Southerner spoke Moimy s name, which thrilled to the 
 soul of Kenyou Leigh. He seized his fiery challenger by 
 the arm, not wishing at this moment to have his own 
 brains blown out, or even to blow out Carroll I)e Laucey s 
 brains, till he should extract more speech from him. 
 
 "Unhand me!" shouted the latter. "Miss Rivers 
 went that journey to New Orleans with my sister, not 
 another living soul with her, my sister Kate, dressed up 
 in my clothes for a lark. Not a lark that I should have 
 recommended beforehand; but, by Heaven! I ll defend 
 them in it now, both those ladies, Miss Rivers and my 
 dead sister. Choose your paces, like a man ! Stand off, 
 I say ! " furiously roared the would-be duellist. But Mr. 
 Leigh succeeded in wrenching both pistols from his grasp, 
 and hurling them across the room, where they exploded 
 with no murder. Then he took Mr. Carroll by both 
 arms with such a grip as mortal man has seldom laid 
 upon his fellow. 
 
 " Speak, speak the sober truth to me ! " he cried ; u nor 
 dare, on your life, to speak one syllable of any thing 
 else! " And the mighty grasp which pinioned him, and 
 those fierce eyes of the suspense-tortured man fixing his, 
 so far magnetized the tipsy youth out of his tipsiness, 
 that he did speak soberly enough at last to impart in 
 some intelligible sort the true story of the two runaway 
 school-girls. 
 
 As the listener heard it all, some strange convulsion 
 passed over his face ; then, letting go the young man with 
 a suddenness which nearly threw him to the floor, he waa 
 gone from the room. 
 
434 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 Mr. Carroll De Lancey stood long agaze at the door by 
 which the visitor had departed, as if he had seen a vision. 
 Then, gathering himself up, he strove to bring all his 
 confused faculties to bear on the amazing interview which 
 Lad just passed. Who had sent that churchman to drag 
 him, as by the hair of the head, to marry Monny Rivers? 
 The idea of the Church as the champion of the indissulu- 
 I ility of marriage was familiar to the youth : had the 
 ecclesiastical aegis begun to extend also over engagements 
 to marry? He concluded so. The figure that had just 
 vanished had powerfully suggested to him Richelieu 
 launching the curse of Rome, only that the rector of St. 
 Ancient s, in his wrath, was infinitely more overwhelm 
 ing than any player of the great Richelieu that Mr. De 
 Lancey had ever seen. Yes, the churchman had doubtless 
 descended on him in his official fury, rather mixing up his 
 business (priests were apt to do that) ; but one thing was 
 clear, that Monny s early engagement to himself had 
 somehow turned up unpleasantly for her. Perhaps, too, 
 all the surroundings of her life had been getting unpleas 
 ant these years. She lived with a guardian. Mr. Carroll 
 considered guardians a naturally pestiferous race ; and he 
 could well imagine the bourgeois Puritan a most tiresome 
 fellow, and his roof the dullest of places. Had all Mon 
 ny s Puritan lovers of that cold North been growing 
 tiresome to her perhaps, and had she turned back to him 
 at last, whom she had cruelly rejected? 
 
 Mr. De Lancey was not a young man to die of heart 
 break over any one disappointment in so gay a world ; but 
 he had been really disappointed in the loss of Mouny 
 Rheis He had never forgotten that rosebud girl of the 
 ballroom, who had remained, in truth, the only girl for 
 whom he had ever yet been willing to put on the serious 
 yoke of matrimony. He found himself fervently willing 
 
A KEVEKEND IDOL. 485 
 
 to put it right on for her now. Richelieu need not have 
 made such a powwow. lie would marry Monny liivers 
 to-morrow* 
 
 It was his place as a gentleman, he maturely decided, 
 to communicate now with the } 7 oung lady herself. Hav 
 ing reached this conclusion, he wisely decided, that, as a 
 first preliminary in the new prospects before him, he should 
 try to compose the present severe jumble of his thoughts 
 by the restorative of sleep ; and, dropping on the nearest 
 sofa, he slept accordingly. 
 
 Carroll De Lancey could sleep off yet, very heavy 
 bumpers ; and when he awoke next day he was in fair 
 condition to write a letter to Monny Rivers, whose present 
 address he had learned through the churchman s fiery 
 summons to him to go to Cape Cod and marry her. He 
 wrote the young lady a very ardent but entirely respect 
 ful love-letter, re-offering himself to her, heart and hand. 
 This letter he mailed her as a kind of herald, deciding, 
 with a prudent remembrance of the bourgeois uncle, that 
 he should wait an answer to the same, before presenting 
 himself in person. 
 
 In that tolerably sober tale which Mr. Leigh had con 
 jured out of Carroll De Lancey, the latter had naturally 
 referred to Mrs. Bingham as authority. That lady, as 
 Mr. Leigh knew, and as Mrs. Van Cortlandt very well 
 knew at the time of her last interview with Monny, had 
 arrived safely in New- York harbor, after all the alarming 
 delay of "The Etolia." 
 
 Mrs. Bingham was a very old friend of Mr. Leigh s, 
 and he sought and ascertained her whereabouts at once. 
 She had gone to her out-of-town place on the Hudson, 
 where Mr. Leigh saw her the very next day ; and how 
 many words did it require from this lady to bring him up, 
 
436 A KEVEREND IDOL. 
 
 out of the horrible pit of false belief into which he had 
 fallen, into the sunlight of day? 
 
 Divine as was that sense of transition from hell to 
 heaven in which Kenyon Leigh journeyed back to Cape 
 Cod, it was pierced with a remorse which it seemed to 
 him would go with him through life, and cleave to him in 
 his shroud, remorse for having ever doubted Monny. 
 
 Contrary to Mrs. Van Cortlandt s belief, Mrs. Binghnm 
 was in possession of data which enabled her absolutely to 
 know and prove that Mrs. Van Cortlandt had knowingly 
 and deliberately lied from the beginning. These proofs 
 she naturally laid before Mr. Leigh, ere their interview 
 ended. But even his indignation over the false woman 
 who had so infamously betrayed them both occupied him 
 but little, so absorbed was he in his own self-reproach, in 
 forever asking himself what tenderness he had failed of 
 towards Monny, that she should have so feared to tell him 
 that poor little folly of her schooldays, which he would 
 have forgotten with a kiss. 
 
 Well, Kenyon Leigh had not failed as a lover : he hatf 
 merely failed, as a man, to comprehend a woman.. 
 
BEVEKKND IDOL. 437 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 despair of the forsaken girl on the Cape-Cod 
 -- shore was a despair from which, in its nature, there 
 could be no re-action : with every hour she only sank the 
 deeper. Sleep never touched her eyelids, nor food her 
 lips ; although she had sense enough left to disguise this 
 from the villager who was housekeeper in Mrs. Doanc s 
 absence, and who regularly brought her meals to the 
 studio. Any suspicious of this woman were easily enough 
 quieted ; for, being almost stone deaf, she went about her 
 duties like an automaton, and, sharing the village under 
 standing that Miss Rivers was a genius, she concluded 
 that the young lady s strange prisoning of herself in her 
 own room was only one of the peculiarities of genius. 
 Even Jenny Hines had flitted home from the abode which 
 had suddenly grown so dull, and where there was nothing 
 to do : so the solitary girl was all unwatched and alone 
 in the darkness which was pressing upon her life and 
 brain. She had no longer a thought of seeking her rela 
 tives : aunt Helen had no plummet to sound her suffer 
 ings now. These were not assuaged by a letter which 
 came back to her from Mr. Leigh, he had written it on 
 the cars, when the first storm of his emotions left him 
 space, to reflect on one last service that could be done the 
 girl. 
 
 " Miss TIrvERS, You must marry Carroll De Lanccy. I shall 
 find him, wherever he is, and bring him to you, and perform the 
 ceremony myself. 
 
 LEIGH." 
 
438 A KEVEIiEND IDOL. 
 
 The man s intent thus to officiate was only moved by 
 his instinctive impulse to make sure that the thing was 
 done ; but to Monny there was an iron hardness, even a 
 terrible mockery, in the laconic note. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt also received a letter from Mr. 
 Leigh about the same time. Yes, the proud man humbled 
 himself to write to the widow, in a blind sense that the 
 aid of some woman would be necessary to get Moimy 
 married to Carroll De Lancey quietly and without scan 
 dal ; and Mrs. Van Cortlandt, as knowing the whole his 
 tory, and having the tact of a woman of the world, 
 seemed to him the one to accomplish this. His note to 
 her was brief and formal enough, but the intriguer 
 clutched it with wild exultation. Once get Mouny mar 
 ried to Carroll De Lancey, and Mrs. Bingham would rise 
 from the dead in vain to undo the bond. 
 
 She knew, as we have said, that Mrs. Bingham had 
 thus risen, that she had landed safe in New York. It 
 would be a desperate race with time now ; but she had 
 already won many desperate chances in this contest, and, 
 suppressing a fierce excitement under her wonted calm 
 manner, the widow sped to the house of her victim. The 
 first sight of the latter alone in her studio strengthened 
 the hopes of the traitress ; for she saw that the crushed 
 girl had sunk down without a thought of doing battle 
 for her name and fame. No : Monny s was not a spirit 
 to have fallen helplessly under any other kind of false 
 accusation. If she had been charged with theft, murder, 
 any crime in the calendar save this which she had been 
 accused of, she would have summoned all her clear young 
 faculties to set the facts of her innocence in such a light 
 that they should be evidence to others. But to know that 
 the purity of a pure maiden could be a debatable thing, 
 that belief in her could turn on such a question as the 
 
A KEVI-:I:I:ND IDOL. 439 
 
 proving of an alibi, this, as we know, had unhinged 
 existence to her. The only response she made to Mrs. 
 Van Cortlamlt s salute was to indicate that she had given 
 orders to admit no one. 
 
 44 Yes, I know," replied the intruder. "But I come 
 fiom Mr. Leigh. lie has written me a letter," and she 
 displayed the missive. "He sees, as the whole world 
 would, that your only salvation is in marrying Carroll De 
 Lancey, that marriage with any other man is forever im 
 possible to you. And, since the engagement with Mr. 
 De Lancey was broken off by yourself, doubtless the 
 young man can be induced to renew it. Mr. Leigh will, 
 I am sure, accomplish this. lie wrote me, asking me to 
 see you at once, to arrange things ; for, of course, the 
 sooner you change your maiden name, the better." 
 
 While all these words were said, Monny s eyes, lifted 
 in their strange, still agony, to the speaker s face, grew 
 wide and wider with an utterly new insight. She saw 
 at last IIEU RIVAL. Stunned by the revelation, she 
 sat for a space ; then she rose slowly to her feet, with 
 some strange, strange exaltation in her bearing, which 
 made her slight figure seem to fill the room, even to the 
 effacing of the tall woman, so little has mere altitude 
 to do with the presence. Self in its last and dearest 
 stronghold was being conquered in the girl by a mightier 
 solicitude. 
 
 "When you are married to Mr. Leigh," she began in 
 a thrilling voice (the startled intriguer changed color, but 
 did not deny the impeachment), "there is something I 
 should wish you to have." And, turning, she took a can 
 vas which was leaned face towards the wall, and sr-t it in 
 open view on an easel. It was the resplendent nead of 
 the Knight-Templar, his in every line and feature. For 
 the moment, even Mrs. Van Cortlandt quailed before the 
 
440 A EEVEEEND IDOL. 
 
 living glory of that face, the solemn, ringing voice of the 
 girl who had painted it for love s sake, as she said, 
 
 4 There came a power upon me, when I painted that 
 picture, to make it true, to show him for the wonderful 
 being he is : therefore I wish you now to have it. kept 
 away somewhere where he will not see it (he will not 
 wish to see my works) ; but keep the picture where you 
 can study it daily, that it may help you to know him 
 rightly, to understand him as he is. How else can you 
 make him happy as his wife?" murmured the girl with 
 a voice of anguished yearning, divining in this clairvoyant 
 moment, if never before, the woman s alien spirit, and 
 comprehending what it would be to Kenyon Leigh to have 
 in his married life at once all the loneliness of solitude, 
 and all the ennui, the obstruction, which there is in inti 
 macy without companionship. 
 
 "I came to speak of the other affair, of your mar 
 riage," began the widow, restless under that soul-piercing 
 gaze which her young victim bent on her face. 
 
 "There needs no talk about that," said Monny, recall 
 ing herself with a shiver, while that stony veil of apathetic 
 despair which had been lifted a little by her questioning 
 throes over Kenyon Leigh s fate settled again upon her 
 face. "I shall make no trouble. I shall obey Mr. 
 Leigh. Until he comes, leave me, leave me, madam ! 
 Leave me!" and there was an imperative passion in the 
 girl s voice which at last the persistent widow dared not 
 disobey : she went. 
 
 Death-like was the low moan with which Monny turned 
 then to the picture of her lost lover : the sobbings of her 
 broken heart made a cruel sound in the little room. By 
 and by she went searching for that sketch she had made 
 of Mrs. Van Cortlandt s head : when it was found, she 
 set it up beside his. Terrible hours went over her while 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 441 
 
 she gazed on the twain. They were to be one, an 1 she 
 
 was to bo delivered over to Carroll DC Lancey : the 
 whole plan of earthly things, the very sense of her own 
 being, grew eon fused and lost to her, save as conscious- 
 ness lived round these two events, which she saw fate, 
 like an iron wheel, swiftly rolling on to bring to pass. 
 
 It was, perhaps, from her deep habit of loyalty to Mr. 
 Leigh s direction, that her mind had made no active 
 resistance to the idea of marrying Carroll De Laneey ; or, 
 indeed, the fact that the young Southerner was the one 
 being in the world to whom she would never have to say, 
 ** J am innocent," may even, at least, for the first mo 
 ment, have given his name a sound of refuge to Monny. 
 
 But there came a violent awakening out of this passive 
 acquiescence. This was when Carroll De Lancey s own 
 letter rched her (it came some twenty-four hours after 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt s visit to her room). Mr. Carroll s 
 letter was a very proper love-letter ; for when he was 
 himself that young man had an admirable sense of the 
 proprieties. But that any man in the universe should dare 
 address love-words to her, save Mr. Leigh, thrilled he/ 
 with a sense of mortal insult : she felt as an outraged wife 
 might feel. Heretofore shame had fallen on her name 
 only ; now, with this marriage to another man, it would 
 reach her very self, would burn into her own soul for 
 ever. This degradation she could not bear, and live ; and 
 out into the wild night she fled, distraught. Her insom 
 nia of so many nights and days had become at last a self- 
 begetting disease: to the fierce throbbing brain-cells there 
 was no longer any possibility of rest. Only one idra was 
 seized by her reeling faculties. It was that Heaven had 
 always allowed women the right to choose death rather 
 than dishonor, and that the hour of that last alternative 
 had come to her. Out of a world where mistakes were 
 
442 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 far more surely punished than crimes, a world which had 
 some terrible necessity to keep social forms inviolate at 
 any and every cost, she must go and go to-night. She 
 felt the pursuers close on her track, that strangest trio 
 of pursuers, coming with that dreadful swiftness with 
 which all the crises of her fate had crowded on each 
 other ; and deliriously she started for the sea. In the 
 deserted house, with only the deaf woman in the kitoheu, 
 there was none to stay her : only a faithful, four-footed 
 creature sprang out and followed her as she ran from the 
 House. 
 
 44 Go home ! " she bade him. But Duke George, usu 
 ally obedient to a word from his young mistress, found 
 something too strange about this lonely sortie; and, dis 
 appearing for a moment only, he was presently rushing 
 again by her side. 
 
 "Go home! go home ! " she cried. But he only 
 wagged his tail deprecatingly : he would not leave her. 
 
 She fell on her knees, clinging desperately round his 
 neck, and sobbing, " Mind poor, poor Mouny, and go 
 home." 
 
 As if the wail of human anguish pierced to the com 
 prehension of the brute creature, this time the dog did go 
 Dack ; and the panting fugitive went on her wild flight 
 ilone. 
 
 All the stark immensity of sand and sea and sky lay 
 *n that kind of spectral gloom made by a moon shining 
 behind one uniform, thick veil of cloud ; only in the west 
 there was a long belt of livid light where the sun had 
 gone down, momently darkening, and, like a lonely speck 
 in the aAvful universe, the girl felt herself flying on and 
 on, with a blind terror in her crazing brain, lest that 
 sullen, vanishing light would not last long enough for her 
 to find her grave by. But the fire of fevm* in her veins 
 
A EEVEREND IDOL. 443 
 
 bore her up and on with such speed find strength, incredi 
 bly soon she reached the bluff, the beach, and that sound 
 of the surge which told her that the tide was not in, but 
 coining. She fled on towards the sound; but her feet 
 sank in the briny ooze : the belt of tide-mud was impas 
 sible. At this she turned, and rushed away for Roaring 
 L( -dge, a broken chain of rocks which began a short 
 distant above her, and extended far out into the deep 
 sea. She had just reached this ledge when a shaggy form 
 pushed against her yes Duke George. He had only 
 made a feint of going back : at a little distance behind 
 her he had stealthily followed all her flight. Many and 
 many a time, at low water, had he gone out on Roaring 
 Ledge with his young mistress (its farthest seaward rock 
 was a favorite sketching-place with her), her light foot 
 springing safely enough over the sea-channels between 
 the rocks, when these were shallow, and the sun was 
 shining. But now, in the slippery darkness, and with the 
 hoarse tide coming in, the creature knew it was a place 
 of death, and tugged at her dress to ask what wild busi 
 ness she had there. She thrust him off: but he would 
 not leave her ; and, as she still plunged wildly on, he flew 
 after, beginning finally to bark aloud. 
 
 With a last, cruel sense that her very dog was turned 
 her foe, the delirious girl leaped only the more desperately 
 from point to point, catching foothold by that miraculous 
 Sense with which the somnambulist walks where the wak- 
 iir^ could not tread, the tide was rushing in to n cct 
 her only a few rods beyond, and she could jump from 
 the recks into depths where the sea devoured its dead, 
 and never rolled them in shore to trouble the eyes of the 
 living. With this one idea in her burning brain, she 
 bounded, on, until in a desperate struggle with the dog, 
 who, as if comprehending at Lost that his mistress had 
 
444 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 gone daft, seized her garments to detain her by force, 
 she caught her foot, whirled, and fell headlong : her 
 temples struck with sharp concussion on the rock and 
 she knew no more. 
 
 Then, indeed, the dog, with no conflicting iap/Jnot of 
 obedience, lifted up his wild cry for help over iuat silent 
 form. Setting his teeth in the girl s garments, he dragged 
 her U the higher levels of the rock ; but even around 
 these the waves were rising with frightful rapidity, and a 
 bark that grew human in its anguish rang afar through 
 the shrouding darkness and over the beating seas. 
 
 A man who had ridden early and late rode up to the 
 Doane house not very long after Monny fled from it. 
 Mrs. Doane was with him. She had come home by rail 
 from the next station above Lonewater. To the first 
 inquiry made by both, the deaf housekeeper replied that 
 the young lady was quiet in her own rooms. These being 
 forthwith explored by Mrs. Doane, and found empty, she 
 said to Mr. Leigh, " She has gone to the village, of 
 course ; probably to the Widow Macey s. Some one will 
 be coining home with her presently." 
 
 Waiting being impossible to the man s mood, he was 
 rushing out of the door to go to the village, when Bobby 
 Ilines, small member of the very large Hines family, 
 came running up the yard, calling out, Where s Miss 
 JMonuy Rivers? " 
 
 At this echo of everybody s cry, Mr. Leigh stood still, 
 N hile the child panted on, 
 
 " The tide hev got her dog out on Roaring Ledge, and 
 he s barking dreadful ! And mother said I must come 
 and tell Miss Rivers, cos she d take on so if he was 
 drowndcd. Mother said .maybe he d hurt hisself out 
 
 
A REVEKEND IDOL. 449 
 
 torm, . Val more. But what could tnybody 
 
 do 
 
 .siness," said the general, 
 .o be told of? Was that story, In 
 .1 story for general circulation? Of 
 . Miss Rivers would tell her husband, 
 > have one. But, at the time, was it not 
 dora, so far as human wisdom can foresee 
 hing, to hush the whole thing up? " 
 
 aigham here did finally make some concessions 
 :e s view of things; but, perhaps because it hurt 
 much to make them, he presently turned to another 
 phase of the subject. 
 
 1 Pretty, you say she is, this bride of so many perils ? 
 What is her style?" 
 
 44 Round and dimpled," replied the lady, "dark eyes, 
 and the most beautiful fair hair and complexion in the 
 world." 
 
 "How charming! There shall be a reception in her 
 honor, to which none but men shall be admitted, especially 
 the unhappily married men like myself (Gen. Bingham 
 worshipped his wife). Do you suppose, that, after suf 
 fering the oblations of women to Kenyon Leigh, the men 
 of this parish are not going to take it out now in adoring 
 his wife?" 
 
 " You know that you worship Mr. Leigh yourself," put 
 in the lady ; " only, being a man, nobody misunderstands 
 your sentiments." 
 
 "Well, the feminine worshippers will have the same 
 mmuuity, now that he is to be married, and married to a 
 aeing who has inspired him with a veritable grande pas 
 o?i, as it seems the golden-haired ) T oung person has. I 
 dud that exactly as it should be. The rockiest heart that 
 walled up around emptiness will tempt the artillery of 
 
450 A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 the daring ; but the one fortress of that kind which the 
 most roving sentimentalist leaves in peace is the one tliat 
 is occupied already by a supreme conqueror. Yes," con 
 cluded the general, 4 we secular men may worry along as 
 we can with our imperfect mates ; but to a magnetic 
 minister Heaven should send his absolute affinity. Of a 
 pulpit genius you should always be able to say in one and 
 the same breath, He s a great preacher, and very much 
 in love with his wife. " 
 
 If doubts still trouble the mind of readers as to the fit 
 ness of Monny Rivers for a minister s wife, it is certain 
 that she would meet the case as defined by Gen. Bingham ; 
 and, the general being a chief warden of Mr. Leigh s own 
 church, it will be seen that the parish was satisfied. That 
 is enough. 
 
 
A REVEREND IDOL. 
 
 447 
 
 of the stmnge events which had attended his courtship), 
 44 one mystery, which, as a man, I humbly ask you to 
 explain to me, my dear. Why, why, ?r////, did you ever 
 advise Miss Rivers to secrecy in the first place, when 
 an open disclosure at the time of all the facts, just as 
 they were, about that New-Orleans journey, would have 
 shown everybody how absolutely innocent the girl was of 
 any fault whatever? " 
 
 " Spoken like a man," replied the lady; "when, after 
 two or three repetitions, all the facts would infallibly have 
 been told just as they were not. Once let out such an 
 adventure as that about a young girl, and Enter Rumor, 
 painted full of tongues. 
 
 "Oh, if we must hide facts, because liars will pervert 
 them ! said the general. 
 
 "You know, Arthur, you must acknowledge, that men 
 can afford to have facts told, when women cannot. At 
 the very best, that story would have given Miss Rivers s 
 name a dashing, adventurous sound, a kind of name 
 that no girl ever deserved less." 
 
 tp And if rescue had come to her a little later that 
 drowning night, and she had died there, as the end of all 
 that mad tangle of lies that she had been wound up in by 
 concealment, would not that have been rather more serious 
 than to have had a wrong sound given to her name half a 
 dozen years before? Young members of the sensitive 
 sex have drowned themselves, and never been brought to 
 life again, either, for considerably less cause than she had 
 after Mrs. Van Cortlandt got hold of her and her story. 
 You see, that story was not completely hidden, with all 
 your pains. There was Mrs. Van Cortlandt knowing it 
 all the while. Somebody always does know things that 
 have really occurred," persisted the man. 
 
 " Now, Arthur, could any mortal foresee the criminal 
 
446 A BEVEKEND IDOL. 
 
 The boat came up, and took in the three, the man, 
 the dog, and the maiden ; but her they lifted as we *.ift 
 the dead. 
 
 " Is she dead ? " a tall, proud woman came stealing up 
 to Mrs. Doane s door to ask, an hour or more ; 
 unconscious young form had been borne through it. 
 
 Susannah lifted high the lamp, and glared fiercely uito 
 the speaker s face. "If she is dead, an* you want to 
 scape the gallows, go buy yourself a dose of sure pison, 
 and drink it quick ! For Mr. Leigh hab found out ail 
 your wickedness, tellin lies on dat pore drowned chile ; 
 an if she never open her innercent eyes again, he ll hab 
 you hung for her murderer ! 
 
 From these lowly lips Mrs. Van Cortlandt knew hei 
 doom ; and the poor, guilty sinner slunk away in the 
 darkness, hastening to put the breadth of a hemisphere 
 between herself and the place where she had played a 
 Satanic game, and lost it. 
 
 The rescued victim did open her eyes again, but not 
 with any knowledge of what they looked on, for many 
 long nights and days. It was through the very gates of 
 death that she came back to life, and oft was the passage 
 terribly uncertain. 
 
 But youth at last conquered, and the love that watched 
 her with superhuman watch-care. 
 
 
 
 "There s one thing," said Gen. Bingham to his wife 
 (Kenyon Leigh s wedding-cards were just out, and had 
 moved a new rehearsal, by this deeply interested fireside, 
 
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