The Minister's Charge

William Dean Howells

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9783849657451
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

With 'The Minister's Charge' Mr. Howells has reached the point where his books are less interesting individually than as parts of a series, and one has the satisfaction with these later works of being able to read them by the light of the author's own canons of criticism. These show that Mr. Howells cannot only preach a philosophy, but live up to it; for the story of Lemuel Barker, so far as it is told, has the " respect for probability, the fidelity to conditions, human and social, which, " he has told us, " can alone justify the reading and writing of novels." We say, "so far as it is told, " for Lemuel, with characteristic reticence, has taken most of his story back with him to Willoughby's Pastures, and leaves us to make what we can of the little we know.

XI.

“What makes Lemuel such a gift,” said Miss Vane, in a talk which she had with Sewell a month later, “is that he is so supplementary.”

“Do you mean just in the supplementary sense of the term?”

“Well, not in the fifth-wheel sense. I mean that he supplements us, all and singular—if you will excuse the legal exactness.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Sewell; “I should like even more exactness.”

“Yes; but before I particularise I must express my general satisfaction in him as a man-body. I had no idea that man bodies in a house were so perfectly admirable.”

“I've sometimes feared that we were not fully appreciated,” said Sewell. “Well?”

“The house is another thing with a man-body in it. I've often gone without little things I wanted, simply because I hated to make Sarah bring them, and because I hated still worse to go after them, knowing we were both weakly and tired. Now I deny myself nothing. I make Lemuel fetch and carry without remorse, from morning till night. I never knew it before, but the man-body seems never to be tired, or ill, or sleepy.”

“Yes,” said Sewell, “that is often the idea of the woman-body. I'm not sure that it's correct.”

“Oh, don't attack it!” implored Miss Vane. “You don't know what a blessing it is. Then, the man-body never complains, and I can't see that he expects anything more in an order than the clear understanding of it. He doesn't expect it to be accounted for in any way; the fact that you say you want a thing is enough. It is very strange. Then the moral support of the presence of a man-body is enormous. I now know that I have never slept soundly since I have kept house alone—that I have never passed a night without hearing burglars or smelling fire.”

“And now?”

“And now I shouldn't mind a legion of burglars in the house; I shouldn't mind being burned in my bed every night. I feel that Lemuel is in charge, and that nothing can happen.”

“Is he really so satisfactory?” asked Sewell, exhaling a deep relief.

“He is, indeed,” said Miss Vane. “I couldn't, exaggerate it.”

“Well, well! Don't try. We are finite, after all, you know. Do you think it can last?”

“I have thought of that,” answered Miss Vane. “I don't see why it shouldn't last. I have tried to believe that I did a foolish thing in coming to your rescue, but I can't see that I did. I don't see why it shouldn't last as long as Lemuel chooses. And he seems perfectly contented with his lot. He doesn't seem to regard it as domestic service, but as domestication, and he patronises our inefficiency while he spares it. His common-sense is extraordinary—it's exemplary; it almost makes one wish to have common-sense one's-self.” They had now got pretty far from the original proposition, and Sewell returned to it with the question, “Well, and how does he supplement you singularly?”

“Oh! oh, yes!” said Miss Vane. “I could hardly tell you without going into too deep a study of character.”

“I'm rather fond of that,” suggested the minister.

“Yes, and I've no doubt we should all work very nicely into a sermon as illustrations; but I can't more than indicate the different cases. In the first place, Jane's forgetfulness seems to be growing upon her, and since Lemuel came she's abandoned herself to ecstasies of oblivion.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. She's quite given over remembering anything, because she knows that he will remember everything.”

“I see. And you?”

“Well, you have sometimes thought I was a little rash.”

“A little? Did I think it was a little?”

“Well, a good deal. But it was all nothing to what I've been since Lemuel came. I used to keep some slight check upon myself for Sibyl's sake; but I don't now. I know that Lemuel is there to temper, to delay, to modify the effect of every impulse, and so I am all impulse now. And I've quite ceased to rule my temper. I know that Lemuel has self-control enough for all the tempers in the house, and so I feel perfectly calm in my wildest transports of fury.”

“I understand,” said Sewell. “And does Sibyl permit herself a similar excess in her fancies and ambitions?”

“Quite,” said Miss Vane. “I don't know that she consciously relies upon Lemuel to supplement her, any more than Jane does; but she must be unconsciously aware that no extravagance of hers can be dangerous while Lemuel is in the house.”

“Unconsciously aware is good. She hasn't got tired of reforming him yet?”

“I don't know. I sometimes think she wishes he had gone a little farther in crime. Then his reformation would be more obvious.”

“Yes; I can appreciate that. Does she still look after his art and literature?”

“That phase has changed a little. She thinks now that he ought to be stimulated, if anything—that he ought to read George Eliot. She's put Middlemarch and Romola on his shelf. She says that he looks like Tito Malemma.”

Sewell rose. “Well, I don't see but what your supplement is a very demoralising element. I shall never dare to tell Mrs. Sewell what you've said.”

“Oh, she knows it,” cried Miss Vane. “We've agreed that you will counteract any temptation that Lemuel may feel to abuse his advantages by the ferociously self-denying sermons you preach at him every Sunday.”

“Do I preach at him? Do you notice it?” asked Sewell nervously.

“Notice it?” laughed Miss Vane. “I should think your whole congregation would notice it. You seem to look at nobody else.”

“I know it! Since he began to come, I can't keep my eyes off him. I do deliver my sermons at him. I believe I write them at him! He has an eye of terrible and exacting truth. I feel myself on trial before him. He holds me up to a standard of sincerity that is killing me. Mrs. Sewell was bad enough; I was reasonably bad myself; but this! Couldn't you keep him away? Do you think it's exactly decorous to let your man-servant occupy a seat in your family pew? How do you suppose it looks to the Supreme Being?”

Miss Vane was convulsed. “I had precisely those misgivings! But Lemuel hadn't. He asked me what the number of our pew was, and I hadn't the heart—or else I hadn't the face—to tell him he mustn't sit in it. How could I? Do you think it's so very scandalous?”

“I don't know,” said Sewell. “It may lead to great abuses. If we tacitly confess ourselves equal in the sight of God, how much better are we than the Roman Catholics?”

Miss Vane could not suffer these ironies to go on.

“He approves of your preaching. He has talked your sermons over with me. You oughtn't to complain.”

“Oh, I don't! Do you think he's really softening a little toward me?”

“Not personally, that I know,” said Miss Vane. “But he seems to regard you as a channel of the truth.”

“I ought to be glad of so much,” said Sewell. “I confess that I hadn't supposed he was at all of our way of thinking. They preached a very appreciable orthodoxy at Willoughby Pastures.”

“I don't know about that,” said Miss Vane. “I only know that he approves your theology, or your ethics.”

“Ethics, I hope. I'm sure they're right.” After a thoughtful moment the minister asked, “Have you observed that they have softened him socially at all—broken up that terrible rigidity of attitude, that dismaying retentiveness of speech?”

“I know what you mean!” cried Miss Vane delightedly. “I believe Lemuel is a little more supple, a little less like a granite boulder in one of his meadows. But I can't say that he's glib yet. He isn't apparently going to say more than he thinks.”

“I hope he thinks more than he says,” sighed the minister. “My interviews with Lemuel have left me not only exhausted but bruised, as if I had been hurling myself against a dead wall. Yes, I manage him better from the pulpit, and I certainly oughtn't to complain. I don't expect him to make any response, and I perceive that I am not quite so sore as after meeting him in private life.”

That evening Lemuel was helping to throng the platform of an overcrowded horse-car. It was Saturday night, and he was going to the provision man up toward the South End, whom Miss Vane was dealing with for the time being, in an economical recoil from her expensive Back Bay provision man, to order a forgotten essential of the Sunday's supplies. He had already been at the grocer's, and was carrying home three or four packages to save the cart from going a third time that day to Bolingbroke Street, and he stepped down into the road when two girls came squeezing their way out of the car.

“Well, I'm glad,” said one of them in a voice Lemuel knew at once, “'t there's one man's got the politeness to make a little grain o' room for you. Thank you, sir!” she added, with more scorn for the others than gratitude for Lemuel. “You're a ...

Table of contents

• I.
• II.
• III.
• IV.
• V.
• VI.
• VII.
• VIII.
• IX.
• X.
• XI.
• XII.
• XIII.
• XIV.
• XV.
• XVI
• XVII.
• XVIII.
• XIX.
• XX.
• XXI.
• XXII.
• XXIII.
• XXIV.
• XXV.
• XXVI.
• XXVII
• XXVIII.
• XXIX.
• XXX.
• XXXI.
• XXXII.
• XXXIII
• XXXIV.
• XXXV.
• XXXVI