_ CHAPTER XLIV. CHURCH GOING
The Sunday bells rang loud from river to river. Loud and sharp they rang in the clear, still air of the summer morning, as if the voice of Everardus Bogardus, the old Dominie of New Amsterdam, were calling the people in many tones to be up and stirring, and eat breakfast, and wash the breakfast things, and be in your places early, with bowed heads and reverend minds, and demurely hear me tell you what sinners you always have been and always will be, so help me God--I, Everardus Bogardus, in the clear summer morning, ding, dong, bell, amen!
So mused Arthur Merlin, between sleeping and waking, as the bells rang out, loud and low--distant and near--flowing like a rushing, swelling tide of music along the dark inlets of narrow streets--touching arid hearts with hope, as the rising water touches dry spots with green. Come you, too, out of your filthy holes and hovels--come to church as in the days when you were young and had mothers, and you, grisly, drunken, blear-eyed thief, lisped in your little lessons--come, all of you, come! The day has dawned; the air is pure; the hammer rests--come and repent, and be renewed, and be young again. The old, weary, restless, debauched, defeated world--it shall sing and dance. You shall be lambs. I see the dawn of the millennium on the heights of Hoboken--yea, even out of the Jerseys shall a good thing come! It is I who tell you--it is I who order you--I, Everardus Bogardus, Dominie of New Amsterdam--ding, dong, bell, amen!
The streets were quiet and deserted. A single hack rattled under his window, and Arthur could hear its lessening sound until it was lost in the sweet clangor of the bells. He lay in bed, and did not see the people in the street; but he heard the shuffling and the slouching, the dragging step and the bright, quick footfall. There were gay bonnets and black hats already stirring--early worshippers at the mass at St. Peter's or St. Patrick's--but the great population of the city was at home.
Except, among the rest, a young man who comes hastily out of Thiel's, over Stewart's--a young man of flowing black hair and fiery black eyes, which look restlessly and furtively up and down Broadway, which seems to the young man odiously and unnaturally bright. He gains the street with a bound. He hurries along, restless, disordered, excited--the black eyes glancing anxiously about, as if he were jealous of any that should see his yesterday was not over, and that somehow his wild, headlong night had been swept into the serene, open bay of morning. He hurries up the street; tossing many thoughts together--calculating his losses, for the black-haired young man has lost heavily at Thiel's faro-table--wondering about payments--remembering that it is Sunday morning, and that he is to attend a young lady from the South to church--a young lady whose father has millions, if universal understanding be at all correct--thinking of revenge at the table, of certain books full of figures in a certain counting-room, and the story they tell--story known to not half a dozen people in the world; the black-eyed youth, in evening dress, alert, graceful, but now meandering and gliding swiftly like a snake, darts up Broadway, and does not seem to hear the bells, whose first stroke startled him as he sat at play, and which are now ringing strange changes in the peaceful air: Come, Newt! Come, Newt! Abel Newt! Come, Newt! It is I, Everardus, Dominie Bogardus--come, come, come! and be d----d, ding, dong, bell, amen-n-n-n!
Later in the morning the bells rang again. The house doors opened, and the sidewalk swarmed with well-dressed people. Boniface Newt and his wife sedately proceeded to church--not a new bonnet escaping Mrs. Nancy, while May walked tranquilly behind--like an angel going home, as Gabriel Bennet said in his heart when he passed her with his sister Ellen leaning on his arm. The Van Boozenberg carriage rolled along the street, conveying Mr. and Mrs. Jacob to meditate upon heavenly things. Mrs. Dagon and Mrs. Orry passed, and bowed sweetly, on their way to learn how to love their neighbors as themselves. And among the rest walked Lawrence Newt with Amy Waring, and Arthur Merlin with Hope Wayne.
The painter had heard the voice of the Dominie Bogardus, which his fancy had heard in the air; or was he obeying another Dominie, of a wider parish, whose voice he heard in his heart? It was not often that the painter went to church. More frequently, in his little studio at the top of a house in Fulton Street, he sat smoking meditative cigars during the Sunday hours; or, if the day were auspicious, even touching his canvas!
In vain his sober friends remonstrated. Aunt Winnifred, with whom he lived, was never weary of laboring with him. She laid good books upon the table in his chamber. He returned late at night, often, and found little tracts upon his bureau, upon the chair in which he usually laid his clothes when he retired--yes, even upon his pillow. "Aunt Winnifred's piety leaves its tracts all over my room," he said, smilingly, to Lawrence Newt.
But when the good lady openly attacked him, and said,
"Arthur, how can you? What will people think? Why don't you go to church?"
Arthur replied, with entire coolness,
"Aunt Winnifred, what's the use of going to church when Van Boozenberg goes, and is not in the least discomposed? I'm afraid of the morality of such a place!"
Aunt Winnifred's eyes dilated with horror. She had no argument to throw at Arthur in return, and that reckless fellow always had to help her out.
"However, dear aunt, you go; and I suppose you ought to be quite as good a reason for going as Van Boozenberg for staying away."
After such a conversation it fairly rained tracts in Arthur's room. The shower was only the signal for fresh hostilities upon his part; but for all the hostility Aunt Winnifred was not able to believe her nephew to be a very bad young man.
As he and his friends passed up Broadway toward Chambers Street they met Abel Newt hastening down to Bunker's to accompany Miss Plumer to Grace Church. The young man had bathed and entirely refreshed himself during the hour or two since he had stepped out of Thiel's. There was not a better-dressed man upon Broadway; and many a hospitable feminine eye opened to entertain him as long and as much as possible as he passed by. He had an unusual flush in his cheek and spring in his step. Perhaps he was excited by the novelty of mixing in a throng of church-goers. He had not done such a thing since on summer Sunday mornings he used to stroll with the other boys along the broad village road, skirted with straggling houses, to Dr. Peewee's. Heavens! in what year was that? he thought, unconsciously. Am I a hundred years old? On those mornings he used to see--Precisely the person he saw at the moment the thought crossed his mind--Hope Wayne--who bowed to him as he passed her party. How much calmer, statelier, and more softly superior she was than in those old Delafield days!
She remembered, too; and as the lithe, graceful figure of the handsome and fascinating Mr. Abel Newt bent in passing, Arthur Merlin, who felt, at the instant Abel passed, as if his own feet were very large, and his clothes ugly, and his movement stupidly awkward--felt, in fact, as if he looked like a booby--Arthur Merlin observed that his companion went on speaking, that she did not change color, and that her voice was neither hurried nor confused.
Why did the young painter, as he observed these little things, feel as if the sun shone with unusual splendor? Why did he think he had never heard a bird sing so sweetly as one that hung at an open window they passed? Nay, why in that moment was he almost willing to paint Abel Newt as the Endymion of his great picture? _