The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church

The wind howled in the chimney and rattled the loose window-sashes; the snow, freezing as it fell, dashed against the glass with hard, cutting little blows; at least, that is the way in which the wind and snow flattered themselves they were making existence disagreeable to Justin Peabody when he read the letter; but never were elements more mistaken.

It was a June Sunday in the boarding-house bedroom; and for that matter it was not the boarding-house bedroom at all: it was the old Orthodox church on Tory Hill in Edgewood.

The windows were wide open, and the smell of the purple clover and the humming of the bees were drifting into the sweet, wide spaces within.  Justin was sitting in the end of the Peabody pew, and Nancy Wentworth was beside him; Nancy, cool and restful in her white dress; dark-haired Nancy under the shadow of her shirred muslin hat.

Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,Thy better portion trace.

The melodeon gave the tune, and Nancy and he stood to sing, taking the book between them.  His hand touched hers, and as the music of the hymn rose and fell, the future unrolled itself before his eyes; a future in which Nancy was his wedded wife; and the happy years stretched on and on in front of them until there was a row of little heads in the old Peabody pew, and mother and father could look proudly along the line at the young things they were bringing into the house of the Lord.

The recalling of that vision worked like magic in Justin’s blood.  His soul rose and stretched its wings and “traced its better portion” vividly, as he sprang to his feet and walked up and down the bedroom floor.  He would get a few days’ leave and go back to Edgewood for Christmas, to join, with all the old neighbours, in the service at the meeting-house; and in pursuance of this resolve, he shook his fist in the face of the landlady’s husband on the mantelpiece and dared him to prevent.

He had a salary of fifty dollars a month, with some very slight prospect of an increase after January.  He did not see how two persons could eat, and drink, and lodge, and dress on it in Detroit, but he proposed to give Nancy Wentworth the refusal of that magnificent future, that brilliant and tempting offer.  He had exactly one hundred dollars in the bank, and sixty or seventy of them would be spent in the journeys, counting two happy, blessed fares back from Edgewood to Detroit; and if he paid only his own fare back, he would throw the price of the other into the pond behind the Wentworth house.  He would drop another ten dollars into the plate on Christmas Day toward the repairs on the church; if he starved, he would do that.  He was a failure.  Everything his hand touched turned to naught.  He looked himself full in the face, recognizing his weakness, and in this supremest moment of recognition he was a stronger man than he had been an hour before.  His drooping shoulders had straightened; the restless look had gone from his eyes; his sombre face had something of repose in it, the repose of a settled purpose.  He was a failure, but perhaps if he took the risks (and if Nancy would take them—but that was the trouble, women were so unselfish, they were always willing to take risks, and one ought not to let them!), perhaps he might do better in trying to make a living for two than he had in working for himself alone.  He would go home, tell Nancy that he was an unlucky good-for-naught, and ask her if she would try her hand at making him over.

CHAPTER VI

These were the reasons that had brought Justin Peabody to Edgewood on the Saturday afternoon before Christmas, and had taken him to the new tavern on Tory Hill, near the Meeting-House.

Nobody recognized him at the station or noticed him at the tavern, and after his supper he put on his overcoat and started out for a walk, aimlessly hoping that he might meet a friend, or failing that, intending to call on some of his old neighbours, with the view of hearing the village news and securing some information which might help him to decide when he had better lay himself and his misfortunes at Nancy Wentworth’s feet.  They were pretty feet!  He remembered that fact well enough under the magical influence of familiar sights and sounds and odours.  He was restless, miserable, anxious, homesick—not for Detroit, but for some heretofore unimagined good; yet, like Bunyan’s shepherd boy in the Valley of Humiliation, he carried “the herb called Hearts-ease in his bosom,” for he was at last loving consciously.

How white the old church looked, and how green the blinds!  It must have been painted very lately: that meant that the parish was fairly prosperous.  There were new shutters in the belfry tower, too; he remembered the former open space and the rusty bell, and he liked the change.  Did the chimney use to be in that corner?  No; but his father had always said it would have drawn better if it had been put there in the beginning.  New shingles within a year: that was evident to a practised eye.  He wondered if anything had been done to the inside of the building, but he must wait until the morrow to see, for, of course, the doors would be locked.  No; the one at the right side was ajar.  He opened it softly and stepped into the tiny square entry that he recalled so well—the one through which the Sunday-school children ran out to the steps from their catechism, apparently enjoying the sunshine after a spell of orthodoxy; the little entry where the village girls congregated while waiting for the last bell to ring—they made a soft blur of pink and blue and buff, a little flutter of curls and braids and fans and sunshades, in his mind’s eye, as he closed the outer door behind him and gently opened the inner one.  The church was flooded with moonlight and snowlight, and there was one lamp burning at the back of the pulpit; a candle, too, on the pulpit steps.  There was the tip-tap-tip of a tack-hammer going on in a distant corner.  Was somebody hanging Christmas garlands?  The new red carpet attracted his notice, and as he grew accustomed to the dim light, it carried his eye along the aisle he had trod so many years of Sundays, to the old familiar pew.  The sound of the hammer ceased and a woman rose from her knees.  A stranger was doing for the family honour what he ought himself to have done.  The woman turned to shake her skirt, and it was Nancy Wentworth.  He might have known it.  Women were always faithful; they always remembered old landmarks, old days, old friends, old duties.  His father and mother and Esther were all gone; who but dear Nancy would have made the old Peabody pew right and tidy for the Christmas festival?  Bless her kind womanly heart!

She looked just the same to him as when he last saw her.  Mercifully he seemed to have held in remembrance all these years not so much her youthful bloom as her general qualities of mind and heart: her cheeriness, her spirit, her unflagging zeal, her bright womanliness.  Her grey dress was turned up in front over a crimson moreen petticoat.  She had on a cosy jacket, a fur turban of some sort with a redbreast in it, and her cheeks were flushed from exertion.  “Sweet records, and promises as sweet,” had always met in Nancy’s face, and either he had forgotten how pretty she was, or else she had absolutely grown prettier during his absence.

Nancy would have chosen the supreme moment of meeting very differently, but she might well have chosen worse.  She unpinned her skirt and brushed the threads off, smoothed the pew cushions carefully, and took a last stitch in the ragged hassock.  She then lifted the Bible and the hymn-book from the rack, and putting down a bit of flannel on the pulpit steps, took a flatiron from an oil-stove, and opening the ancient books, pressed out the well-thumbed leaves one by one with infinite care.  After replacing the volumes in their accustomed place, she first extinguished the flame of her stove, which she tucked out of sight, and then blew out the lamp and the candle.  The church was still light enough for objects to be seen in a shadowy way, like the objects in a dream, and Justin did not realize that he was a man in the flesh, looking at a woman; spying, it might be, upon her privacy.  He was one part of a dream and she another, and he stood as if waiting, and fearing, to be awakened.

Nancy, having done all, came out of the pew, and standing in the aisle, looked back at the scene of her labours with pride and content.  And as she looked, some desire to stay a little longer in the dear old place must have come over her, or some dread of going back to her lonely cottage, for she sat down in Justin’s corner of the pew with folded hands, her eyes fixed dreamily on the pulpit and her ears hearing: “Not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning.”

Justin’s grasp on the latch tightened as he prepared to close the door and leave the place, but his instinct did not warn him quickly enough, after all, for, obeying some uncontrollable impulse, Nancy suddenly fell on her knees in the pew and buried her face in the cushions.

The dream broke, and in an instant Justin was a man—worse than that, he was an eavesdropper, ashamed of his unsuspected presence.  He felt himself standing, with covered head and feet shod, in the holy temple of a woman’s heart.

But his involuntary irreverence brought abundant grace with it.  The glimpse and the revelation wrought their miracles silently and irresistibly, not by the slow processes of growth which Nature demands for her enterprises, but with the sudden swiftness of the spirit.  In an instant changes had taken place in Justin’s soul which his so-called “experiencing religion” twenty-five years back had been powerless to effect.  He had indeed been baptized then, but the recording angel could have borne witness that this second baptism fructified the first, and became the real herald of the new birth and the new creature.

CHAPTER VII

Justin Peabody silently closed the inner door, and stood in the entry with his head bent and his heart in a whirl until he should hear Nancy rise to her feet.  He must take this Heaven-sent chance of telling her all, but how do it without alarming her?

A moment, and her step sounded in the stillness of the empty church.

Obeying the first impulse, he passed through the outer door, and standing on the step, knocked once, twice, three times; then, opening it a little and speaking through the chink, he called, “Is Miss Nancy Wentworth here?”

“I’m here!” in a moment came Nancy’s answer, and then, with a little wondering tremor in her voice, as if a hint of the truth had already dawned: “What’s wanted?”

“You’re wanted, Nancy, wanted badly, by Justin Peabody, come back from the West.”

The door opened wide, and Justin faced Nancy standing half-way down the aisle, her eyes brilliant, her lips parted.  A week ago Justin’s apparition confronting her in the empty Meeting-House after nightfall, even had she been prepared for it as now, by his voice, would have terrified her beyond measure.  Now it seemed almost natural and inevitable.  She had spent these last days in the church where both of them had been young and happy together; the two letters had brought him vividly to mind, and her labour in the old Peabody pew had been one long excursion into the past in which he was the most prominent and the best-loved figure.

“I said I’d come back to you when my luck turned, Nancy.”

These were so precisely the words she expected him to say, should she ever see him again face to face, that for an additional moment they but heightened her sense of unreality.

“Well, the luck hasn’t turned, after all, but I couldn’t wait any longer.  Have you given a thought to me all these years, Nancy?”

“More than one, Justin”; for the very look upon his face, the tenderness of his voice, the attitude of his body, outran his words and told her what he had come home to say, told her that her years of waiting were over at last.

“You ought to despise me for coming back again with only myself and my empty hands to offer you.”

How easy it was to speak his heart out in this dim and quiet place!  How tongue-tied he would have been, sitting on the black haircloth sofa in the Wentworth parlour and gazing at the open soapstone stove!

“Oh, men are such fools!” cried Nancy, smiles and tears struggling together in her speech, as she sat down suddenly in her own pew and put her hands over her face.

“They are,” agreed Justin humbly, “but I’ve never stopped loving you, whenever I’ve had time for thinking or loving.  And I wasn’t sure that you really cared anything about me; and how could I have asked you when I hadn’t a dollar in the world?”

“There are other things to give a woman besides dollars, Justin.”

“Are there?  Well, you shall have them all, every one of them, Nancy, if you can make up your mind to do without the dollars; for dollars seem to be just what I can’t manage.”

Her hand was in his by this time, and they were sitting side by side in the cushionless, carpetless Wentworth pew.  The door stood open; the winter moon shone in upon them.  That it was beginning to grow cold in the church passed unnoticed.  The grasp of the woman’s hand seemed to give the man new hope and courage, and Justin’s warm, confiding, pleading pressure brought balm to Nancy, balm and healing for the wounds her pride had suffered; joy, too, half-conscious still, that her life need not be lived to the end in unfruitful solitude.  She had waited, “as some grey lake lies, full and smooth, awaiting the star below the twilight.”  Justin Peabody might have been no other woman’s star, but he was Nancy’s!

“Just you sitting beside me here makes me feel as if I’d been asleep or dead all these years, and just born over again,” said Justin.  “I’ve led a respectable, hard-working, honest life, Nancy,” he continued, “and I don’t owe any man a cent; the trouble is that no man owes me one.  I’ve got enough money to pay two fares back to Detroit on Monday, although I was terribly afraid you wouldn’t let me do it.  It’ll need a good deal of thinking and planning, Nancy, for we shall be very poor.”

Nancy had been storing up fidelity and affection deep, deep in the hive of her heart all these years, and now the honey of her helpfulness stood ready to be gathered.

“Could I keep hens in Detroit?” she asked.  “I can always make them pay.”

“Hens—in three rooms, Nancy?”

Her face fell.  “And no yard?”

“No yard.”

A moment’s pause, and then the smile came.  “Oh, well, I’ve had yards and hens for thirty-five years.  Doing without them will be a change.  I can take in sewing.”

“No, you can’t, Nancy.  I need your backbone and wits and pluck and ingenuity, but if I can’t ask you to sit with your hands folded for the rest of your life, as I’d like to, you shan’t use them for other people.  You’re marrying me to make a man of me, but I’m not marrying you to make you a drudge.”

His voice rang clear and true in the silence, and Nancy’s heart vibrated at the sound.

“Oh, Justin, Justin!” she whispered.  “There’s something wrong somewhere, but we’ll find it out together, you and I, and make it right.  You’re not like a failure.  You don’t even look poor, Justin; there isn’t a man in Edgewood to compare with you, or I should be washing his dishes and darning his stockings this minute.  And I am not a pauper!  There’ll be the rent of my little house and a carload of my furniture, so you can put the three-room idea out of your mind, and your firm will offer you a larger salary when you tell them you have a wife to take care of.  Oh, I see it all, and it is as easy and bright and happy as can be!”

Justin put his arm around her and drew her close, with such a throb of gratitude for her belief and trust that it moved him almost to tears.

There was a long pause: then he said:—

“Now I shall call for you to-morrow morning after the last bell has stopped ringing, and we will walk up the aisle together and sit in the old Peabody pew.  We shall be a nine-days’ wonder anyway, but this will be equal to an announcement, especially if you take my arm.  We don’t either of us like to be stared at, but this will show without a word what we think of each other and what we’ve promised to be to each other, and it’s the only thing that will make me feel sure of you and settled in my mind after all these mistaken years.  Have you got the courage, Nancy?”

“I shouldn’t wonder!  I guess if I’ve had courage enough to wait for you, I’ve got courage enough to walk up the aisle with you and marry you besides!” said Nancy.—“Now it is too late for us to stay here any longer, and you must see me only as far as my gate, for perhaps you haven’t forgotten yet how interested the Brewsters are in their neighbours.”

They stood at the little Wentworth gate for a moment, hand close clasped in hand.  The night was clear, the air was cold and sparkling, but with nothing of bitterness in it; the sky was steely blue and the evening star glowed and burned like a tiny sun.  Nancy remembered the shepherd’s song she had taught the Sunday-school children, and repeated softly:—

For I my sheep was watchingBeneath the silent skies,When sudden, far to eastward,I saw a star arise;Then all the peaceful heavensWith sweetest music rang,And glory, glory, glory!The happy angels sang.So I this night am joyful,Though I can scarce tell why,It seemeth me that gloryHath met us very nigh;And we, though poor and humble,Have part in heavenly plan,For, born to-night, the Prince of PeaceShall rule the heart of man.

Justin’s heart melted within him like wax to the woman’s vision and the woman’s touch.

“Oh, Nancy, Nancy!” he whispered.  “If I had brought my bad luck to you long, long ago, would you have taken me then, and have I lost years of such happiness as this?”

“There are some things it is not best for a man to be certain about,” said Nancy, with a wise smile and a last good-night.

CHAPTER VIII

“Ring out, sweet bells,O’er woods and dellsYour lovely strains repeat,While happy throngsWith joyous songsEach accent gladly greet.”

Christmas morning in the old Tory Hill Meeting-House was felt by all of the persons who were present in that particular year to be a most exciting and memorable occasion.

The old sexton quite outdid himself, for although he had rung the bell for more than thirty years, he had never felt greater pride or joy in his task.  Was not his son John home for Christmas, and John’s wife, and a grandchild newly named Nathaniel for himself?  Were there not spareribs and turkeys and cranberries and mince pies on the pantry shelves, and barrels of rosy Baldwins in the cellar and bottles of mother’s root beer just waiting to give a holiday pop?  The bell itself forgot its age and the suspicion of a crack that dulled its voice on a damp day, and, inspired by the bright, frosty air, the sexton’s inspiring pull, and the Christmas spirit, gave out nothing but joyous tones.

Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  It fired the ambitions of star scholars about to recite hymns and sing solos.  It thrilled little girls expecting dolls before night.  It excited beyond bearing dozens of little boys being buttoned into refractory overcoats.  Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  Mothers’ fingers trembled when they heard it, and mothers’ voices cried: “If that is the second bell, the children will never be ready in time!  Where are the overshoes?  Where are the mittens?  Hurry, Jack!  Hurry, Jennie!”  Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  “Where’s Sally’s muff?  Where’s father’s fur cap?  Is the sleigh at the door?  Are the hot soapstones in?  Have all of you your money for the contribution box?”

Ding-dong!  Ding-dong!  It was a blithe bell, a sweet, true bell, a holy bell, and to Justin, pacing his tavern room, as to Nancy, trembling in her maiden chamber, it rang a Christmas message:—

Awake, glad heart!  Arise and sing;It is the birthday of thy King!

The congregation filled every seat in the old Meeting-House.

As Maria Sharp had prophesied, there was one ill-natured spinster from a rival village who declared that the church floor looked like Joseph’s coat laid out smooth; but in the general chorus of admiration, approval, and good will, this envious speech, though repeated from mouth to mouth, left no sting.

Another item of interest long recalled was the fact that on that august and unapproachable day the pulpit vases stood erect and empty, though Nancy Wentworth had filled them every Sunday since any one could remember.  This instance, though felt at the time to be of mysterious significance if the cause were ever revealed, paled into nothingness when, after the ringing of the last bell, Nancy Wentworth walked up the aisle on Justin Peabody’s arm, and they took their seats side by side in the old family pew.

(“And consid’able close, too, though there was plenty o’ room!”)

(“And no one that I ever heard of so much as suspicioned that they had ever kept company!”)

(“And do you s’pose she knew Justin was expected back when she scrubbed his pew a-Friday?”)

(“And this explains the empty pulpit vases!”)

(“And I always said that Nancy would make a real handsome couple if she ever got anybody to couple with!”)

During the unexpected and solemn procession of the two up the aisle the soprano of the village choir stopped short in the middle of the Doxology, and the three other voices carried it to the end without any treble.  Also, among those present there were some who could not remember afterward the precise petitions wafted upward in the opening prayer.

And could it be explained otherwise than by cheerfully acknowledging the bounty of an overruling Providence that Nancy Wentworth should have had a new winter dress for the first time in five years—a winter dress of dark brown cloth to match her beaver muff and victorine?  The existence of this toilette had been known and discussed in Edgewood for a month past, and it was thought to be nothing more than a proper token of respect from a member of the carpet committee to the general magnificence of the church on the occasion of its reopening after repairs.  Indeed, you could have identified every member of the Dorcas Society that Sunday morning by the freshness of her apparel.  The brown dress, then, was generally expected; but why the white cashmere waist with collar and cuffs of point lace, devised only and suitable only for the minister’s wedding, where it first saw the light?

“The white waist can only be explained as showing distinct hope!” whispered the minister’s wife during the reading of the church notices.

“To me it shows more than hope; I am very sure that Nancy would never take any wear out of that lace for hope; it means certainty!” answered Maria, who was always strong in the prophetic line.

By sermon time Justin’s identity had dawned upon most of the congregation.  A stranger to all but one or two at first, his presence in the Peabody pew brought his face and figure back, little by little, to the minds of the old parishioners.

When the contribution plate was passed, the sexton always began at the right-wing pews, as all the sextons before him had done for a hundred years.  Every eye in the church was already turned upon Justin and Nancy, and it was with almost a gasp that those in the vicinity saw a ten dollar bill fall in the plate.  The sexton reeled, or, if that is too intemperate a word for a pillar of the church, the good man tottered, but caught hold of the pew rail with one hand, and, putting the thumb of his other over the bill, proceeded quickly to the next pew, lest the stranger should think better of his gift, or demand change, as had occasionally been done in the olden time.

Nancy never fluttered an eyelash, but sat quietly by Justin’s side with her bosom rising and falling under the beaver fur and her cold hands clasped tight in the little brown muff.  Far from grudging this appreciable part of their slender resources, she thrilled with pride to see Justin’s offering fall in the plate.

Justin was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice anything, but his munificent contribution had a most unexpected effect upon his reputation, after all; for on that day, and on many another later one, when his sudden marriage and departure with Nancy Wentworth were under discussion, the neighbours said to one another:—

“Justin must be making money fast out West!  He put ten dollars in the contribution plate a-Sunday, and paid the minister ten more next day for marryin’ him to Nancy; so the Peabody luck has turned at last!” which, as a matter of fact, it had.