Book: The Voice

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THE VOICE
BY
MARGARET DELAND

CHAPTER I

"Dr. Lavendar," said William
King, "some time when Goliath
is doing his 2.40 on a plank road, don't
you want to pull him up at that house
on the Perryville pike where the Grays
used to live, and make a call? An old
fellow called Roberts has taken it;
he is a--"

"Teach your grandmother," said
Dr. Lavendar; "he is an Irvingite. He
comes from Lower Ripple, down on the
Ohio, and he has a daughter, Philippa."

"Oh," said Dr. King, "you know 'em,
do you?"

"Know them? Of course I know
them! Do you think you are the only
man who tries to enlarge his business?
But I was not successful in my efforts.
The old gentleman doesn't go to any
church; and the young lady inclines to
the Perryville meeting-house--the parson
there is a nice boy."

"She is an attractive young creature,"
said the doctor, smiling at some pleasant
memory; "the kind of girl a man would
like to have for a daughter. But did
you ever know such an old-fashioned
little thing!"

"Well, she's like the girls I knew when
I was the age of the Perryville parson,
so I suppose you'd call her old-fashioned,"
Dr. Lavendar said. "There
aren't many such girls nowadays;
sweet-tempered and sensible and with
some fun in 'em."

"Why don't you say 'good,' too?"
William King inquired.

"Unnecessary," Dr. Lavendar said,
scratching Danny's ear; "anybody who
is amiable, sensible, and humorous is
good. Can't help it."

"The father is good," William King
said, "but he is certainly not sensible.
He's an old donkey, with his TONGUES
and his VOICE!"

Dr. Lavendar's face sobered. "No,"
he said, "he may be an Irvingite, but
he isn't a donkey."

"What on earth is an Irvingite,
anyhow?" William asked.

Dr. Lavendar looked at him, pityingly:
"William, you are so ridiculously
young! Well, I suppose you can't help
it. My boy, about the time you were
born, there was a man in London--
some folks called him a saint, and some
folks called him a fool; it's a way folks
have had ever since our Lord came into
this world. His name was Irving, and he
started a new sect." (Dr. Lavendar was
as open-minded as it is possible for one
of his Church to be, but even he said
"sect" when it came to outsiders.)

"He started this new sect, which believed
that the Holy Ghost would
speak again by human lips, just as
on the Day of Pentecost. Well, there
was 'speaking' in his congregation;
sort of outbursts of exhortation, you
know. Mostly unintelligible. I
remember Dr. Alexander said it was
'gibberish'; he heard some of it when
he was in London. It may have been
'gibberish,' but nobody can doubt
Irving's sincerity in thinking it was the
Voice of God. When he couldn't
understand it, he just called it an
'unknown tongue.' Of course he was
considered a heretic. He was put out of
his Church. He died soon after, poor
fellow."

"Doesn't Mr. Roberts's everlasting
arguing about it tire you out?" William
asked.

"Oh no," Dr. Lavendar said, cheerfully;
"when he talks too long I just
shut my eyes; he never notices it!
He's a gentle old soul. When I answer
back--once in a while I really have to
speak up for the Protestant Episcopal
Church--I feel as if I had kicked Danny."
William King grinned. Then he got
up and, drawing his coat-tails forward,
stood with his back to the jug of lilacs
in Dr. Lavendar's fireplace. "Oh, well,
of course it's all bosh," he said, and
yawned; "I was on a case till four
o'clock this morning," he apologized.

"William," said Dr. Lavendar,
admiringly, "what an advantage you
fellows have over us poor parsons!
Everything a medical man doesn't understand
is 'bosh'! Now, we can't classify things
as easily as that."

"Well, I don't care," William said,
doggedly; "from my point of view--"

"From your point of view," said Dr.
Lavendar, "St. Paul was an epileptic,
because he heard a Voice?"

"If you really want to know what I
think--"

"I don't," Dr. Lavendar said; "I
want you to know what I think. Mr.
Roberts hasn't heard any Voice, yet;
he is only listening for it. William,
listening for the Voice of God isn't
necessarily a sign of poor health; and
provided a man doesn't set himself up
to think he is the only person his
Heavenly Father is willing to speak to,
listening won't do him any harm. As
for Henry Roberts, he is a humble old
man. An example to me, William! I
am pretty arrogant once in a while.
I have to be, with such men as you in
my congregation. No; the real trouble
in that household is that girl of his. It
isn't right for a young thing to live in
such an atmosphere."

William agreed sleepily. "Pretty
creature. Wish I had a daughter just
like her," he said, and took himself off
to make up for a broken night's rest.
But Dr. Lavendar and Danny still sat
in front of the lilac-filled fireplace, and
thought of old Henry Roberts listening
for the Voice of God, and of his Philippa.
The father and daughter had lately
taken a house on a road that wandered
over the hills between elderberry-bushes
and under sycamores, from Old Chester
to Perryville. They were about
half-way between the two little towns,
and they did not seem to belong to
either. Perryville's small manufacturing
bustle repelled the silent old man
whom Dr. Lavendar called an "Irvingite";
and Old Chester's dignity and dull
aloofness repelled young Philippa.
The result was that the Robertses and
their one woman servant, Hannah, had
been living on the Perryville pike for
some months before anybody in either
village was quite aware of their existence.
Then one day in May, Dr. Lavendar's
sagging old buggy pulled up at
their gate, and the old minister
called over the garden wall to Philippa:
"Won't you give me some of your apple
blossoms?"

That was the beginning of Old Chester's
knowledge of the Roberts family.
A little later Perryville came to know
them, too: the Rev. John Fenn, pastor
of the Perryville Presbyterian Church,
got off his big, raw-boned Kentucky
horse at the same little white gate in
the brick wall at which Goliath had
stopped, and walked solemnly--not
noticing the apple blossoms--up to the
porch. Henry Roberts was sitting there
in the hot twilight, with a curious
listening look in his face--a look of
waiting expectation; it was so marked, that
the caller involuntarily glanced over his
shoulder to see if any other visitor was
approaching; but there was nothing to
be seen in the dusk but the roan nibbling
at the hitching-post. Mr. Fenn said
that he had called to inquire whether
Mr. Roberts was a regular attendant
at any place of worship. To which the
old man replied gently that every place
was a place of worship, and his own
house was the House of God.
John Fenn was honestly dismayed at
such sentiments--dismayed, and a little
indignant; and yet, somehow, the
self-confidence of the old man daunted him.
It made him feel very young, and there
is nothing so daunting to Youth as to
feel young. Therefore he said, venerably,
that he hoped Mr. Roberts realized
that it was possible to deceive oneself
in such matters. "It is a dangerous
thing to neglect the means of grace,"
he said.

"Surely it is," said Henry Roberts,
meekly; after which there was nothing
for the caller to do but offer the Irvingite
a copy of the _American Messenger_
and take his departure. He was so
genuinely concerned about Mr. Roberts's
"danger," that he did not notice Philippa
sitting on a stool at her father's side.
But Philippa noticed him.

So, after their kind, did these two
shepherds of souls endeavor to establish
a relationship with Henry and
Philippa Roberts. And they were
equally successful. Philippa gave her
apple blossoms to the old minister,--and
went to Mr. Fenn's church the very
next Sunday. Henry Roberts accepted
the tracts with a simple belief in the
kindly purpose of the young minister,
and stayed away from both churches.
But both father and daughter were
pleased by the clerical attentions:

"I love Dr. Lavendar," Philippa
said to her father.

"I am obliged to Mr. Fenn," her
father said to Philippa. "The youth,"
he added, "cares for my soul. I am
obliged to any one who cares for my
soul."

He was, indeed, as Dr. Lavendar said,
a man of humble mind; and yet with
his humbleness was a serene certainty
of belief as to his soul's welfare that
would have been impossible to John
Fenn, who measured every man's chance
of salvation by his own theological
yardstick, or even to Dr. Lavendar,
who thought salvation unmeasurable.
But then neither of these two ministers
had had Henry Roberts's experience.
It was very far back, that experience;
it happened before Philippa was born;
and when they came to live between the
two villages Philippa was twenty-four
years old....

It was in the thirties that young
Roberts, a tanner in Lower Ripple,
went to England to collect a small
bequest left him by a relative. The
sense of distance, the long weeks at sea
in a sailing-vessel, the new country and
the new people, all impressed themselves
upon a very sensitive mind, a
mind which, even without such emotional
preparation, was ready to respond to
any deeply emotional appeal. Then
came the appeal. It was that new
gospel of the Tongues, which, in those
days, astounded and thrilled all London
from the lips of Edward Irving--fanatic,
saint, and martyr!--the man who, having
prayed that God would speak again
in prophecy, would not deny the power
of prayer by refusing to believe that his
prayer was answered, even though the
prophecy was unintelligible. And later,
when the passionate cadences of the
spirit were in English, and were found
to be only trite or foolish words,
repeated and repeated in a wailing chant
by some sincere, hysterical woman, he
still believed that a new day of Pentecost
had dawned upon a sinful world! "For,"
said he, "when I asked for bread, would
God give me a stone?"

Henry Roberts went to hear the
great preacher and forgot his haste
to receive his little legacy so that he
might hurry back to the tanyard.
Irving's eloquence entranced him, and it
alone would have held him longer than
the time he had allowed himself for
absence from the tannery. But it
happened that he was present on that
Lord's Day when, with a solemn and
dreadful sound, the Tongues first spoke
in that dingy Chapel in Regent Square,
and no man who heard that Sound
ever forgot it! The mystical youth from
America was shaken to his very soul.
He stayed on in London for nearly a
year, immersing himself in those tides
of emotion which swept saner minds
than his from the somewhat dry land
of ordinary human experience. That
no personal revelation was made to
him, that the searing benediction of the
Tongues had not touched his own awed,
uplifted brow, made no difference: he
believed!--and prayed God to help
any lingering unbelief that might be
holding him back from deeper knowledges.
To the end of his days he was
Edward Irving's follower; and when
he went back to America it was as a
missionary of the new sect, that
called itself by the sounding title
of The Catholic Apostolic Church.
In Lower Ripple he preached to any
who would listen to him the doctrine
of the new Pentecost. At first curiosity
brought him hearers; his story of
the Voice, dramatic and mysterious,
was listened to in doubting silence;
then disapproved of--so hotly disapproved
of that he was sessioned and read
out of Church.

But in those days in western Pennsylvania,
mere living was too engrossing a matter
for much thought of "tongues" and
"voices"; it was easier, when a man
talked of dreams and visions, not to
argue with him, but to say that he
was "crazy." So by and by Henry
Roberts's heresy was forgotten and his
religion merely smiled at. Certainly
it struck no roots outside his own
heart. Even his family did not share
his belief. When he married, as he did
when he was nearly fifty, his wife was
impatient with his Faith--indeed, fearful
of it, and with persistent, nagging
reasonableness urged his return to
the respectable paths of Presbyterianism.
To his pain, when his girl, his
Philippa, grew up she shrank from
the emotion of his creed; she and her
mother went to the brick church under
the locust-trees of Lower Ripple; and
when her mother died Philippa went
there alone, for Henry Roberts, not
being permitted to bear witness in the
Church, did so out of it, by sitting at
home on the Sabbath day, in a bare
upper chamber, waiting for the
manifestation of the Holy Spirit. It never
came. The Tongues never spoke. Yet
still, while the years passed, he waited,
listening--listening--listening; a
kindly, simple old man with mystical
brown eyes, believing meekly in his
own unworth to hear again that Sound
from Heaven, as of a rushing, mighty
wind, that had filled the London Chapel,
bowing human souls before it as a great
wind bows the standing corn!

It was late in the sixties that Henry
Roberts brought this faith and his Philippa
to the stone house on the Perryville
pike, where, after some months
had passed, they were discovered by
the old and the young ministers. The
two clergymen met once or twice in
their calls upon the new-comer, and
each acquired an opinion of the other:
John Fenn said to himself that the old
minister was a good man, if he was an
Episcopalian; and Dr. Lavendar said
to William King that he hoped there
would be a match between the "theolog"
and Philippa.

"The child ought to be married and
have a dozen children," he said;
"although Fenn's little sister will do to
begin on--she needs mothering badly
enough. Yes, Miss Philly ought to be
making smearkase and apple-butter for
that pale and excellent young man.
He intimated that I was a follower of
the Scarlet Woman because I wore a
surplice."

"Now look here! I draw the line
at that sort of talk," the doctor said;
"he can lay down the law to me, all he
wants to; but when it comes to
instructing you--"

"Oh, well, he's young," Dr. Lavendar
soothed him; "you can't expect
him not to know everything at his age."

"He's a squirt," said William. In
those days in Old Chester middle age
was apt to sum up its opinion of youth
in this expressive word.

"We were all squirts once," said Dr.
Lavendar, "and very nice boys we were,
too--at least I was. Yes, I hope the
youngster will see what a sweet creature
old Roberts's Philippa is."

She was a sweet creature; but as
William King said, she was amusingly
old-fashioned. The Old Chester girl of
those days, who seems (to look back
upon her in these days) so medieval,
was modern compared to Philippa! But
there was nothing mystical about her;
she was just modest and full of pleasant
silences and soft gaieties and simple,
startling truth-telling. At first,
when they came to live near Perryville,
she used, when the weather was fine, to
walk over the grassy road, under the
brown and white branches of the sycamores,
into Old Chester, to Dr. Lavendar's
church. "I like to come to your
church," she told him, "because you
don't preach quite such long sermons as
Mr. Fenn does." But when it rained
or was very hot she chose the shorter
walk and sat under John Fenn, looking
up at his pale, ascetic face, lighted from
within by his young certainties
concerning the old ignorances of people
like Dr. Lavendar--life and death and
eternity. Of Dr. Lavendar's one certainty,
Love, he was deeply ignorant, this
honest boy, who was so concerned for
Philippa's father's soul! But Philippa
did not listen much to his certainties; she
coaxed his little sister into her pew, and
sat with the child cuddled up against
her, watching her turn over the leaves of
the hymn-book or trying to braid the
fringe of Miss Philly's black silk mantilla
into little pigtails. Sometimes Miss
Philly would look up at the careworn
young face in the pulpit and think how
holy Mary's brother was, and how
learned--and how shabby; for he had
only a housekeeper, Mrs. Semple, to
take care of him and Mary. Not but
what he might have had somebody
besides Mrs. Semple! Philippa, for all
her innocence, could not help being
aware that he might have had--almost
anybody! For others of Philly's sex
watched the rapt face there in the pulpit.
When Philippa thought of that,
a slow blush used to creep up to her
very temples. She saw him oftener in
the pulpit than out of it, because
when he came to call on her father
she was apt not to be present.
At first he came very frequently to
see the Irvingite, because he felt it his
duty to "deal" with him; but he made
so little impression that he foresaw the
time when it would be necessary to
say that Ephraim was joined to his
idols. But though it might be right
to "let him alone," he could not stop
calling at Henry Roberts's house; "for,"
he reminded himself, "the believing
daughter may sanctify the unbelieving
father!" He said this once to Dr.
Lavendar, when his roan and old Goliath
met in a narrow lane and paused
to let their masters exchange a word or
two.

"But do you know what the believing
daughter believes?" said Dr. Lavendar.
He wiped his forehead with his red bandanna,
for it was a hot day; then he put
his old straw hat very far back on his head
and looked at the young man with a
twinkle in his eye, which, considering
the seriousness of their conversation,
was discomfiting; but, after all, as
John Fenn reminded himself, Dr. Lavendar
was very old, and so might be
forgiven if his mind was lacking in
seriousness. As for his question of
what the daughter believed:
"I think--I hope," said the young
minister, "that she is sound. She comes
to my church quite regularly."
"But she comes to my church quite
irregularly," Dr. Lavendar warned
him; and there was another of those
disconcerting twinkles.

The boy looked at him with honest,
solemn eyes. "I still believe that she
is sound," he said, earnestly.

Dr. Lavendar blew his nose with a flourish
of the red bandanna. "Well, perhaps
she is, perhaps she is," he said, gravely.
But the reassurance of that "perhaps"
did not make for John Fenn's peace of
mind; he could not help asking himself
whether Miss Philippa WAS a "believing
daughter." She did not, he was sure,
share her father's heresies, but
perhaps she was indifferent to them?
which would be a grievous thing!
And certainly, as the old minister had
declared, she did go "irregularly" to the
Episcopal Church. John Fenn wished
that he was sure of Miss Philippa's
state of mind; and at last he said to
himself that it was his duty to find out
about it, so, with his little sister beside
him, he started on a round of pastoral
calls. He found Miss Philly sitting in
the sunshine on the lowest step of the
front porch--and it seemed to Mary
that there was a good deal of delay in
getting at the serious business of play;
"for brother talks so much," she
complained. But "brother" went on
talking. He told Miss Philippa that he
understood she went sometimes to Old
Chester to church?

"Sometimes," she said.
"I do not mean," he said, hesitatingly,
"to speak uncharitably, but we all
know that Episcopacy is the handmaid
of Papistry."

"Do we?" Philly asked, with grave
eyes.

"Yes," said Mr. Fenn. "But even
if Dr. Lavendar's teachings are
defective,"--Mary plucked at his sleeve,
and sighed loudly; "(no, Mary!)--
even if his teachings are defective, he
is a good man according to his lights;
I am sure of that. Still, do you think
it well to attend a place of worship
when you cannot follow the pastor's
teachings?"

"I love him. And I don't listen to
what he says," she excused herself.

"But you should listen to what
ministers say," the shocked young man pro-
tested--"at least to ministers of the
right faith. But you should not go to
church because you love ministers."

Philippa's face flamed. "I do not
love--most of them."

Mary, leaning against the girl's knee,
looked up anxiously into her face. "Do
you love brother?" she said.

They were a pretty pair, the child and
the girl, sitting there on the porch with
the sunshine sifting down through the
lacy leaves of the two big locusts on
either side of the door. Philippa wore
a pink and green palm-leaf chintz; it
had six ruffles around the skirt and
was gathered very full about her slender
waist; her lips were red, and her
cheeks and even her neck were delicately
flushed; her red-brown hair was
blowing all about her temples; Mary
had put an arm around her and
was cuddling against her. Yes, even
Mary's brother would have thought
the two young things a pretty sight
had there been nothing more serious
to think of. But John Fenn's
thoughts were so very serious that even
Mary's question caused him no
embarrassment; he merely said, stiffly,
that he would like to see Miss Philippa
alone. "You may wait here, Mary,"
he told his little sister, who frowned
and sighed and went out to the gate
to pull a handful of grass for the roan.

Philippa led her caller to her rarely
used parlor, and sat down to listen in
silent pallor to his exhortations. She
made no explanations for not coming
to his church regularly; she offered no
excuse of filial tenderness for her
indifference to her father's mistaken beliefs;
she looked down at her hands, clasped
tightly in her lap, then out of the window
at the big roan biting at the hitching-post
or standing very still to let Mary rub
his silky nose. But John Fenn looked
only at Philippa. Of her father's heresies
he would not, he said, do more than
remind her that the wiles of the devil
against her soul might present them-selves
through her natural affections;
but in regard to her failure to wait
upon the means of grace he spoke
without mercy, for, he said, "faithful
are the wounds of a friend."

"Are you my friend?" Philly asked,
lifting her gray eyes suddenly.

Mr. Fenn was greatly confused; the
text-books of the Western Seminary had
not supplied him with the answer to
such a question. He explained, hurriedly,
that he was the friend of all
who wished for salvation.

"I do not especially wish for it,"
Philippa said, very low.

For a moment John Fenn was silent
with horror. "That one so young
should be so hardened!" he thought;
aloud, he bade her remember hell fire.
He spoke with that sad and simple
acceptance of the fact with which, even
less than fifty years ago, men humbled
themselves before the mystery which
they had themselves created, of divine
injustice. She must know, he said,
his voice trembling with sincerity,
that those who slighted the offers of
grace were cast into outer darkness?

Philly said, softly, "Maybe."

"'Maybe?' Alas, it is, certainly!
Oh, why, WHY do you absent yourself
from the house of God?" he said,
holding out entreating hands. Philippa
made no reply. "Let us pray!"
said the young man; and they knelt
down side by side in the shadowy
parlor. John Fenn lifted his harsh,
melancholy face, gazing upward
passionately, while he wrestled for her
salvation; Philly, looking downward,
tracing with a trembling finger the
pattern of the beadwork on the ottoman
before which she knelt, listened with an
inward shiver of dismay and ecstasy.
But when they rose to their feet she
had nothing to say. He, too, was
silent. He went away quite exhausted
by his struggle with this impassive,
unresisting creature.

He hardly spoke to Mary all the way
home. "A hardened sinner," he was
thinking. "Poor, lovely creature! So
young and so lost!" Under Mary's
incessant chatter, her tugs at the end of
the reins, her little bursts of joy at the
sight of a bird or a roadside flower, he
was thinking, with a strange new pain--a
pain no other sinner had ever roused in
him--of the girl he had left. He
knew that his arguments had not
moved her. "I believe," he thought,
the color rising in his face, "that
she dislikes me! She says she loves
Dr. Lavendar; yes, she must dislike me.
Is my manner too severe? Perhaps
my appearance is unattractive." He
looked down at his coat uneasily.

As for Philly, left to herself, she
picked up a bit of sewing, and her face,
at first pale, grew slowly pink. "He
only likes sinners," she thought; "and,
oh, I am not a sinner!"

CHAPTER II

After that on Sabbath mornings
Philippa sat with her father, in
the silent upper chamber. At first
Henry Roberts, listening--listening--
for the Voice, thought, rapturously,
that at the eleventh hour he was to
win a soul--the most precious soul in his
world!--to his faith. But when, after a
while, he questioned her, he saw that
this was not so; she stayed away
from other churches, but not because
she cared for his church. This troubled
him, for the faith he had outgrown was
better than no faith.

"Do you have doubts concerning the
soundness of either of the ministers--the
old man or the young man?" he asked her,
looking at her with mild, anxious eyes.

"Oh no, sir," Philly said, smiling.

"Do you dislike them--the young
man or the old man?"

"Oh no, father. I love--one of
them."

"Then why not go to his church?
Either minister can give you the seeds
of salvation; one not less than the
other. Why not sit under either ministry?"
"I don't know," Philippa said, faintly.
And indeed she did not know why
she absented herself. She only knew
two things: that the young man seemed
to disapprove of the old man; and when
she saw the young man in the pulpit,
impersonal and holy, she suffered.
Therefore she would not go to hear
either man.

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