A Modern Instance eBook

IV.

The forenoon sunshine, beating strong upon the thin snow along the edges of the porch floor, tattered them with a little thaw here and there; but it had no effect upon the hard-packed levels of the street, up the middle of which Bartley walked in a silence intensified by the muffled voices of exhortation that came to him out of the churches.  It was in the very heart of sermon-time, and he had the whole street to himself on his way up to Squire Gaylord’s house.  As he drew near, he saw smoke ascending from the chimney of the lawyer’s office,—­a little white building that stood apart from the dwelling on the left of the gate, and he knew that the old man was within, reading there, with his hat on and his long legs flung out toward the stove, unshaven and unkempt, in a grim protest against the prevalent Christian superstition.  He might be reading Hume or Gibbon, or he might be reading the Bible,—­a book in which he was deeply versed, and from which he was furnished with texts for the demolition of its friends, his adversaries.  He professed himself a great admirer of its literature, and, in the heat of controversy, he often found himself a defender of its doctrines when he had occasion to expose the fallacy of latitudinarian interpretations.  For liberal Christianity he had nothing but contempt, and refuted it with a scorn which spared none of the worldly tendencies of the church in Equity.  The idea that souls were to be saved by church sociables filled him with inappeasable rancor; and he maintained the superiority of the old Puritanic discipline against them with a fervor which nothing but its re-establishment could have abated.  It was said that Squire Gaylord’s influence had largely helped to keep in place the last of the rigidly orthodox ministers, under whom his liberalizing congregation chafed for years of discontent; but this was probably an exaggeration of the native humor.  Mrs.

Gaylord had belonged to this church, and had never formally withdrawn from it, and the lawyer always contributed to pay the minister’s salary.  He also managed a little property for him so well as to make him independent when he was at last asked to resign by his deacons.

In another mood, Bartley might have stepped aside to look in on the Squire, before asking at the house door for Marcia.  They relished each other’s company, as people of contrary opinions and of no opinions are apt to do.  Bartley loved to hear the Squire get going, as he said, and the old man felt a fascination in the youngster.  Bartley was smart; he took a point as quick as lightning; and the Squire did not mind his making friends with the Mammon of Righteousness, as he called the visible church in Equity.  It amused him to see Bartley lending the church the zealous support of the press, with an impartial patronage of the different creeds.  There had been times in his own career when the silence of his opinions would have greatly advanced him, but he had not chosen