CHAPTER V.

THE PHILOSOPHER.

“Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis of the voyage of Life.”

RAMSAY ON HUMAN HAPPINESS.

The next morning early Emily May was over at the hall. She rode her own saddle-horse and little Gusty rode another, behind which was fixed a pillion, upon which Sophie was to return to the Grove—at least, so said Mrs. May, for she persisted that Heath Hall was neither a safe nor a proper place of residence for Miss Churchill. But neither coaxing threats nor arguments would have prevailed with Sophie to leave the Heath—her antipathy to Emily’s boarder was undiminished. Emily spent the day with her, and at nightfall left, disappointed.

That evening, after the beldam and the infant were asleep, Sophie as usual sat alone in her large old parlor. She felt a sense of security and peace, and plied her knitting-needles diligently—her thoughts occupied with no heavier matter than the heeling and toeing of little Hagar’s red worsted stockings, or at most, the well-being of her cow and calf, or her vegetable garden, for already upon the maiden had descended matronly cares. She sat there knitting, and presently a rap—a calm, self-possessed rap was heard at the hall door; she glanced at the old clock in the corner, it was seven o’clock; she passed to the door and reached it just as the rap was repeated; she opened it, and Mr. Withers, the minister, stood before her; his thin dark figure looming up in the moonshine.

“Good evening, Miss Churchill,” said he, stepping in, taking her hand and pressing it gently. “You have quite recovered your fright, I trust?”

“Quite, sir,” replied Sophie, laconically, as she reluctantly led the way into the room and set a chair for her minister on the opposite side of her workstand. He dropped himself into it, and extending his long legs towards the little fire, he said,—

“You were not at church last Sabbath, Miss Sophie, and it was with a view of inquiring the reason of your absence that I came here—may I make that inquiry now?”

“Except while with Mrs. May I have not been to church for many months.”

“May I inquire, as your pastor, why?”

“The distance is considerable; that, in Summer, would be no objection, but during the Winter and Spring the roads are nearly impassable to a foot passenger, and I have no conveyance.”

“Ah!” said the minister, a gleam of pleasure lighting up his dark countenance, “then I am very happy in possessing the means of obviating that objection; having just purchased a gig, I shall be very happy in making a small circuit in my ride, for the purpose of taking you to church.”

“You will be giving yourself too much trouble, sir,” said Sophie.

“Not so, my dear; you must see that to _me_ at least it will be a pleasure.”

“You are very obliging, sir.”

Sophie’s eyes were fixed upon her knitting. She appeared to be counting the stitches. He found it very difficult to support a conversation with her, but he persevered, questioning her with a pastor’s privilege with a young parishioner, upon the state of her affairs in general, her income, the number of slaves on hire, the resources of her farm, her fishing landing, her moor, her garden, and her dairy. She gave him laconic, but straightforward answers, and at the end of the colloquy he mused, and, half to himself, said, that the place had been very much abused, that with ease it might yet be reclaimed, and a handsome property made of it; and then, at the end of an hour, he arose and took leave.

Sophie rejoiced that his visit was at an end. Throughout his whole stay she had not once raised her eyes to his countenance.

Two evenings from that, at the same hour, and in the same place, Sophie sat alone, a rap was heard at the door, and again she arose, opened it, and admitted the minister; again he found a seat at the opposite side of her workstand; and again he freely used his pastoral privilege of questioning her; but this time it was not upon external circumstances, but upon the operations of her mind and heart; and how adroitly he did it—_with his pastoral privilege_—and but for her antipathy, how easy had been his task, with one of Sophie’s _naiveté_. Yes, she admitted, in reply to his searching questions, that even she, young as she was, sometimes felt life to wane and sink as though her very soul was dying in her bosom, that sometimes life appeared to have no object worth pursuing.

“You suffer from ennui then, Miss Churchill, perhaps you would not feel this so much in the company of your friend, Mrs. May, would you?”

“Yes, sir, I have felt dull even with Emily.”

“Do you suffer from _ennui_ when busied in your garden, your dairy, or at your needle-work?”

“Yes, sir, for it seems to me sometimes a sad waste of life to pass it _only_ in feeding the stomach and clothing the back.”

Sophie was certainly beginning to be more communicative; the pastor was drawing her out. He looked at her now with more interest than ever, as he said—

“And yet, Miss Churchill, there is your friend, Mrs. May, who finds her happiness in her daily life and household duties. How do you account for her habitual cheerfulness; or do you suppose that she is ever a victim to ennui?”

“_Never!_ But then Emily May is a ‘fine woman,’ every one says so—‘an excellent manager’—the best housekeeper in the county, and she is happy, busy and happy, because she deserves to be. I am, or if I could afford it, _should_ be idle, for I am not as fond of household work as Emily is, and I am discontented, and as idleness and discontent are sin, and sin is misery, therefore I am sometimes miserable, it is quite plain.”

“Why don’t you overcome this sinful tendency then?”

“As yet I have not been able to do it, I resolve—”

“‘And re-resolve,’ and will be likely to ‘die the same,’ if you do not get to the root of your malady and understand it. Your explanation” (and the pastor smiled a slightly cynical smile) “is an orthodox piece of theology enough, as far as it goes. Idleness is certainly sinful and a fruitful cause of discontent, because it is opposed to the principles of our organization; there is no atom in the universe idle for a single instant, nor are we, even our bodies, _ever_ idle, even when sleeping, for the heart, lungs, and brain continue to perform their functions, even when _dead_; for when the dust returns to dust, its particles, through a thousand ramifications, perform a thousand services in the universe. And the mind? Is the mind _ever_ idle? Has the course of thought been once really arrested since it first began? It has flowed in countless millions of courses; it has been suddenly turned aside, but has it ever stopped? Your heart has beaten, your brain worked for twenty years, to what purpose? No, Miss Churchill, by _idleness_ you mean misdirection of energies; and by _discontent_ the pain that naturally follows therefrom. Listen to me, Miss Churchill.”

Sophie was listening to him with interest—these thoughts, however old, were to the unopened mind of the young girl new and striking.

“Listen, I can explain your friend’s happiness and your own misery, better and more satisfactorily than you have done—and by doing so, illustrate the lesson I wish to give you; and further and more completely to illustrate my theory, I must bring in another acquaintance of ours, Mrs. Gardiner Green; what is her character, Sophie?”

“An elegant woman, all the neighbors say, but always in a bustle, always overheated about something, always anxious.”

“I thought so! she will do for an illustration of my first class _à merveille_.

“Listen then, Miss Churchill—the secret of happiness is _this_: the striking of a just balance between the desires and the faculties; if the desires are greater than the faculties, they will goad you on to efforts beyond your strength, and anxiety will destroy happiness, as in the case of Mrs. Gardiner Green, whose desires Heaven knows are low enough—being only to shine as the bright particular star of a country neighborhood—to have the best house, the best equipage, to wear the best dresses, and give the best dinners; grovelling as these wishes are, they yet exceed her faculties for accomplishing them—hence her eternal fret. I can further illustrate this class of unfortunates by a notorious name, Aaron Burr; brilliant as were his faculties his desires yet transcended them—he wished to rule alike despotically over the hearts and minds of men and women, and over the nations of the earth. In both these cases that I have cited, one from the highest, the other from the lowest grade of mind, the evil was the same—the balance between the faculties and the desires was not struck. Well, Miss Churchill, you are musing—upon what?”

“I was thinking, had Aaron Burr had the power of accomplishing his ambitious desires, or had Mrs. Gardiner Green the ability to carry out her vain ones, would either be any happier?”

“That involves another question of moral philosophy to which we have not arrived, and which we will not discuss just now. We are speaking of present and positive causes of unhappiness, and not of future contingencies, Sophie—I beg your pardon, Miss Churchill.”

“Call me Sophie, I am more accustomed to that name,” said she, rather timidly. Truly Miss Churchill was “coming round,” and the minister felt it, for he replied gently,

“And I am more accustomed to hear you called Sophie—and,” added he softly, “to _think_ of you as Sophie.”

She avoided meeting his eyes, which she felt fixed upon her, and a strange pain, dissipating all the intellectual pleasures she was beginning to receive from his society, crept into her heart—she blamed herself for having spoken in the manner she did.

He resumed,

“You, Sophie, belong to the second class of my unfortunates, the class whose _faculties_ transcend their desires, whose peculiar torment is _ennui_. You, Sophie, have some noble faculty or faculties unemployed, and they are corroding in your bosom, and you call your suffering discontent. Your remedy is to discover these latent faculties (for very often these are as unknown or unsuspected by their possessor, as is some obscure physical disease), and develope and cultivate them—it is their suppressed life that is torturing you now—bring them out, use them, give them a field and you will be happy.”

“But how?” said Sophie, looking up again.

“I will teach you by-and-by. Pass we now to the third class, or those whose faculties and desires are fairly balanced, who suffer neither from ennui on the one side nor anxiety on the other. Your friend, Mrs. May, is a perfect example of this happy organization; her whole soul is in her house and family; she has no wish beyond the well ordering of her dwelling, the propriety of her dress, her table, her manners and conversation, and the education of her son, and her faculties are fully equal to, and not greater than her wishes; thus she is always calmly busy and serenely happy.”

He now arose to take leave, and Sophie took the lamp to light him to the door. When they got there he held out his hand to bid her good night; he caught her hand, held it a moment while his glance sought her eyes, met them, and he murmured in a low earnest voice, “Sophie.”

She withdrew her hand, dropped her eyes, and a chill crept over her frame. He whispered “good night,” set his hat upon his head, and walked off. His tall thin figure was soon seen stalking up and down the undulating hills that descended to the river.

Two or three days passed and Miss Churchill saw no more of the minister. “I wonder if he will come to-night,” had been the secret thought of Sophie as evening approached each day; and half with dread, half with hope, she listened for his knock. His last visit had been on Wednesday. Saturday evening came. Sophie had completed her week’s work, and was sitting at the window with her hands folded on her lap, and looking out into the moonlit scene. The moon was now full, and the broad river and the boundless bay were reflected in its light and seen between the clumps of intervening trees. At last upon the path issuing from the clump of trees on the left, was seen the tall figure of the minister. Sophie withdrew from the window, and soon after Mr. Withers was admitted by old Cumbo, who had not yet retired to bed.

“Well, Miss Churchill,” said he, advancing to her side, “have you succeeded in discovering those faculties, whose corrosion in idleness is giving you so much distress?”

“I cannot flatter myself, sir, with the idea of possessing any faculties above the simple discharge of plain duties.”

“Then you are quite happy in knitting, sewing, and watching old Cumbo milk the cows and weed the garden; and you never wish these occupations varied except by rest and recreation?”

Sophie was silent. He had now taken a seat by her side on the settle under the window. Sophie’s eyes were riveted abstractedly on the opposite wall, papered with the martyrdom of St. Petronella and the four noble Roman ladies who suffered with her; the scene represented the martyrdom at the moment when life was offered the young saint as she stood upon the scaffold, on condition of her recantation. She stood in the centre of the scaffold arrayed in a scant white tunic, her white and slender limbs exposed, her hands clasped upon her bosom, and her fine blue eyes raised to heaven, her golden locks rolling to her waist; behind her, leaning on his axe, whose end rested on the block, stood the executioner; on her left hand stood the group of imperial officers, with their offer of mercy; on her right knelt her aged father with his grey locks streaming on the wind, his face upturned to hers in the anguish of supplication, holding towards her a babe of a few days old—_her_ babe, of which she had been delivered in prison—appealing to her by the venerableness of his own grey hairs, the innocence of its infancy, and the helplessness of both, to avoid death, to recant her faith, and to live for them; but the eyes of the saint never fell from their high glance, the look alike above the terror, the bribe, and the love below her.

“Well, Miss Churchill, when you have contemplated that saint, which the painter has martyred worse than the Pagans, to your heart’s content, you will give me an answer, perhaps, or is it so familiar that you never see it?”

“It is very familiar, sir, but it never wearies me; and now that you remind me of it, I sometimes, when I have nothing to do in the house, and when the weather is too inclement for me to go out, reproduce these scenes with a pencil and paper, and sometimes,” said she, blushing deeply, “illustrate them with pen and ink.”

“You draw, and write poetry; will you permit me to see some of your productions?”

“I try, but fail in both, sir; and if you will pardon me, I would prefer not to expose my folly further.”

The pastor urged his point in vain, Sophie gently but firmly resisted.

But at this moment old Cumbo, who had hobbled out of the room, hobbled back, and before Sophie suspected her purpose, thrust into the pastor’s hands a dilapidated old portfolio, grumbling out,

“I telled her so—wouldn’t b’lieve ole nigger, how de church would be down on top ob her for make de image ob ebery ting in heaben above, in de earf beneaf, an’ de waters under de earf. I telled her how ’twould be.”

The minister examined the contents of the portfolio with a critic’s eye; it was filled with very mediocre drawings, and very common-place versicles; in vain did the pastor look for one single stray gleam of genius; no more flashes of the fire divine were to be seen in her work than in her own soft brown eyes. The minister returned the papers to the portfolio, and handed it back to the old negress, who stood leaning over her stick in chuckling expectation of hearing her young mistress soundly lectured upon breaking the first commandment.

“This is idleness, this is play, this is not your vocation, Miss Churchill,” and looking upon Sophie’s round face, large soft eyes, and pouting lips, he said,

“I think after all, those strong faculties that want expression reside in your _heart_, not in your _head_, Miss Churchill.” Then, as though he had regretted his speech, he was suddenly silent.

After a while he arose to take leave, saying as he left the house,

“I will call at nine to-morrow, to take you to church, Sophie.”

The next morning he called in his vehicle. He found Sophie seated at the window with little Hagar on her lap. She was teaching her to read, and her whole countenance was irradiated with the love of her work. The child’s little wild dark face was sparkling, too; she had succeeded in arousing and riveting her mind. As the eyes of the minister fell through the open window upon this scene he made two silent comments: “Her vocation is that of a teacher,” and “That child has far more genius than her instructress;” and then he passed by the window into the house.

“Good morning, Miss Churchill. Come, we are waiting for you. Mrs. Gardiner Green has been kind enough to ride over with me.”

Sophie gave little Hagar into the charge of old Cumbo, and went away to put on her bonnet. She was surprised that Mrs. Gardiner Green, who had scarcely ever condescended to notice her, should have been so kind upon this occasion; had Sophie Churchill known a little more of the world she would have seen nothing strange in this change. Even when seated by her side the affability of the lady became almost oppressive.