Steeplechase (20 page)

Then Horatio grasped at a straw. What if Josiah had no legal right to ensnare a congregation? He called himself “the Reverend,” but what if he had never been ordained?

Once again, Horatio riffled the pages of his books until he found an excellent passage in a splendid work by Dr. Ross: “The local churches are the only organs of the Spirit provided for this work of ordination. They have consequently the highest reasons for keeping out of the ministry all whom the Lord has not qualified and called.”

Keeping that fiend in human flesh, Josiah Gideon, out of the ministry, that was what it meant. Horatio stood up eagerly and snatched off the shelf
The Handbook of the Congregational Ministry in Massachusetts.
It was a useful compendium. Horatio often ran his finger down the lists of pastors to find the names of colleagues here and there. Now his finger raced down a page and stopped abruptly at Josiah Gideon's name. Josiah had been ordained in the year 1840 in the First Parish Church of Hemingford, Connecticut. The man was actually a clergyman. He did indeed have the right to an ecclesiastical title.

Disappointed, Horatio threw the book on the floor. He couldn't bear it. He rose from his chair and paced around the room. In his despair, he would have torn his garments, had they not been woven of stout Boston broadcloth. Instead, he laid his suffering head against the plaster forehead of Marcus Tullius Cicero and wept.

How much further, Catiline, will you carry your abuse

of our forbearance? What bounds will you set

to this display of your uncontrolled audacity?

Alas! What degenerate days are these
!

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, “First Oration Against Catiline”

Another Bitter Pill

E
ven worse than the humiliating church service on Sunday was Ingeborg's
conversazione
the following Thursday.

Wilhelmina Wilder sent a note by her kitchen maid. “Dearest Ingeborg, I am so sorry, but I am indisposed this afternoon, having taken to my bed.”

A creamy envelope from Eugenia Hunt was delivered by her husband's hired man. He arrived at the parsonage door just as Abigail Whittey came up the steps of the front porch. Ingeborg took the envelope, Abigail opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, and Ingeborg's maid, Millie, scurried past with the cake stand.

“My dear Ingeborg,” said Eugenia's note, “I am
désolée
that I cannot attend this afternoon, being afflicted with one of my frightful migraines. I shall spend the afternoon in bed in
stygian darkness
, having drawn the shades.”

“Well, it's too bad,” said Ingeborg to Abigail, rallying her forces, “it appears that our circle will be a little diminished this afternoon. Minnie and Eugenia have both been taken ill.”

“Eugenia?” said Abigail in surprise. “But I saw Eugenia's buggy careering down Quarry Pond Road only a moment ago.” Abigail realized at once that she should not have said this, but she went on bravely to deliver her own regrets. “I'm dreadfully sorry, Ingeborg, but I've only stopped by to tell you that a very important engagement has come up, which will prevent my attendance this afternoon.”

Abigail had rehearsed this speech, mumbling it over and over on the way to the parsonage, but it did not have the hoped-for effect. Ingeborg's company face changed. She glowered at Abigail, who then whipped out something from under her shawl, thrust it at Ingeborg, and fled, explaining as she scuttled out the door, “I just wondered if you'd seen this.”

“Seen what?” Ingeborg stared at the
Boston Evening Transcript.
But at once, two more of her ladies fluttered in and had to be welcomed. With her heart clenched in foreboding, Ingeborg laid the
Transcript
on the hall table and led them into the sitting room, where the topic of the afternoon had been changed from the question about depraved humanity—it was depraved; it most certainly was—to a safer subject: “Poetry sublime.”

A circle of three was too small to be called a
conversazione
, especially since Eugenia and Abigail, the cleverest of Ingeborg's friends, were missing. Even frivolous young Ella Viles had not come, although she had failed to send an excuse.

“Cynthia,” said Ingeborg, pulling herself together, “I hope you will favor us with your opinion?”

Cynthia Smith jerked upright in her chair and tried to remember the first line of “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” She had committed the entire poem to memory, but now under the gelid eye of Ingeborg Biddle, she could remember only one line. “O Attic shape!” gibbered Cynthia, then faltered to a stop. “I'll just read it from the book,” she whispered timidly.

Pity Ingeborg Biddle! She was not a stupid woman, and her efforts to raise the intellectual aspirations of the women of Nashoba were surely worthy of praise. Heroically, she explained to silly Cynthia Smith and foolish Dora Mills that the discussion this afternoon was supposed to be concerned with the meaning and value of the poetic instinct, not merely a recitation of favorite verses.

Eugenia and Abigail would have been up to it, but not Cynthia and Dora. They were struck dumb. In desperation, Cynthia reared up from her chair, seized the cake stand, and rushed it across the room to Dora, who stopped up her mouth with macaroons, and then to Ingeborg, who waved it away.

The afternoon was a failure. Not until her guests had made their farewells could Ingeborg plump herself down on the sofa with the newspaper and a piece of cake.

Only then did she understand the pitiful excuses of Minnie, Eugenia, and Abigail. The subject of the afternoon's discussion had been poetry, and this, too, was a poem, but it was a bitter blow.

On the first page of the
Transcript
, the lofty view of Nashoba's burial ground appeared once again, with the white scar of the chestnut stump showing clearly among the tombstones. But this time, there was also a poem by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was a parody of Longfellow's “The Village Blacksmith,” but at the same time it was a villainous attack on a nameless person who could be none other than the Reverend Horatio Biddle.

Under the spreading chestnut tree

A vicious killer stands;

He looks up at the branches free
,

A great ax in his hands.

The tree flings wide its glorious crown
,

Its leaves the winds caress.

Two hundred years the burial ground

By this tree has been blessed.

But now the madman lifts his ax

To play the devil's part.

The keen blade strikes and strikes again

To burst that mighty heart.

Great nature weeps, Nashoba's jewel

Lies shattered on the ground
,

Broken, the hearts of young and old

In all the country round.

Let good men curse the vandal vile

Who killed our ancient tree.

May this foul deed afflict his soul

Till he shall cease to be.

Ingeborg couldn't believe her eyes. Anguished, she read the dreadful poem again. The “vandal vile” had been her own distinguished husband. Everyone in Nashoba knew it, and soon everyone in the great cities of Cambridge and Boston would know it, too. The name of the Reverend Horatio Biddle would be a byword and a hissing throughout the land—or at least throughout the Massachusetts counties of Suffolk and Middlesex, which were all of the land that mattered.

Of course it was the fault of Josiah Gideon. And yet—how strange!—Ingeborg felt a curious hunger rising in her heart. She longed to run down the hill and across the road, knock on the Gideons' door, and fling herself into the open arms of Mrs. Julia Gideon.

Had Horatio seen today's
Transcript?
How wretched it would make him! The poor man was spending most of his time sequestered in his study.

Horatio was there today, hiding away from Ingeborg and her ladies, from the tea party and the high tone of the conversation. Once again, he sat at his desk reading Cicero, his spectacles hooked over his ears. Here he could recover from the perfidy of the outside world and be almost happy. As always, Marcus Tullius Cicero could be depended upon to open wide his marble arms and take Horatio to his breast.

The Purloined Parish

W
eek after week the kidnapping went on, during which time the roof of Josiah's church was shingled, the glass fitted in the window openings, and many other crucial details completed under the direction of Eben Flint.

One dismal Sunday morning, Ingeborg hurried in desperation from the parsonage to the Home Farm and roused out every one of the elderly residents, the slackers as well as the faithful. Old Dickie Doll was not among them, but a dozen others shambled after Ingeborg across the green and into the church.

To them and to another handful of worshipers—Ingeborg's maid, Millie, her cook, the church sexton, and the keeper of the grounds—Horatio Biddle preached. These days, he no longer had the heart to compose new thoughts and order them into a homily that began with Scripture, went on to state a thesis that rose to a rousing climax, and fell away softly to a gentle restatement and a final scriptural passage. This morning, his wife, Ingeborg, winced as she recognized the opening words of Horatio's discourse on the virtues of temperance.

Half a mile away in the clearing beside the Acton Turnpike, the absconding congregation walked into their new house of worship to celebrate its completion. The structure that had been only a visionary shape in the air last June was now sheathed and sealed from the weather. A ladder in one corner led to the bell chamber. The entrance door had been hung in place, and now it carried a wooden shield carved with a tree, the work of Dickie Doll. The interior was still unplastered and the pews were only rough boards, but there were splendid finishing touches. Eudocia Flint had contributed her reed organ, the choirmistress of Horatio Biddle's church had made off with a set of hymnbooks, and David Kibbee had fitted up an iron stove and had hung from the rafters a stovepipe that wrapped itself around three sides of the chamber.

But it was the pulpit that was everyone's pride. Dickie Doll had made it from leftover ends and pieces of chestnut boards. He had cut them to size, clamped them in the jaws of his vise, mitered the edges, and polished the surfaces until they were silk under his hand. Then with buckets of hoof parings from the local smithy, he had boiled up a foul-smelling pot of glue to seal the separate elements into one substance, never to come asunder. Then Dickie's pleasure had begun in earnest. His decorative carving for the pulpit was his masterpiece. The swags of flowers and fruit, the bearded prophets supporting the pediment, and the channeled colonettes at the corners would have done credit to Grinling Gibbons, if Dickie had ever heard of Grinling Gibbons, but of course he had not. The clever fingers chiseling the fine-grained wood had followed pictures in Dickie's own head.

The men and women of the purloined congregation smiled as they sat down on the benches facing this wonder of art. All were in their Sunday best—the men in black coats, the women in bonnets and shawls. In spite of the fine clothes, there was an atmosphere of cutting school, of throwing off a burdensome yoke. In place of churchgoing gravity in a pious hush, there were joyful greetings, shakings of hands, clappings on backs. The small rough building might have been a towering church with a steeple as high as the sky.

This first Sunday in October was as warm as a day in August. Pine knots in a basket were ready to hand, but today there was no need for David Kibbee to set a fire going in the stove. The cheerful members of the new congregation settled themselves on the benches in the fragrance of newly sawn boards. They picked up their hymnbooks, adjusted their coattails, smoothed their skirts, and hushed their children. Professor Eaton had no children, but there were smiles of approval as he sat down. His gray whiskers were an ornament and his distinguished presence flattered the congregation.

Ida and Alexander Clock belonged to the First Parish in Concord, and so did Ida's mother, Eudocia, but they had come with Eben to celebrate the first gathering of the new parish. Young Horace was there, too, wedged between his mother and stepfather. Horace was overawed. He sat in rigid stillness until Mr. Kibbee took hold of the bell rope and pulled it down with all his strength. Then Horace squirmed around to watch Mr. Kibbee's arms rise and fall to make the bell ring harsh and loud.

It rang and rang. Mr. Kibbee was tireless. In the meantime, the rest of the congregation faced forward, looking at the pulpit. In its magnificence, it was like a seal of approval or a document declaring the right of this church to exist.

The bell stopped ringing. Josiah Gideon stood up from the bench where he had been sitting with his wife, stepped forward to the pulpit, and called for prayer.

If the Spratt brothers had been floating over the new building in their balloon, reaching out from the basket to catch prayers drifting up through the newly shingled roof, they would have netted dozens that called for a blessing on the new congregation. The only personal supplication was the fervent appeal of Julia Gideon.

Of course Julia was grateful that her husband's volcanic decision to form a new parish had won the support of so many friends and neighbors. But what about the lawsuit? Josiah had seemed entirely unconcerned when the dreaded letter arrived in the mail. He had tossed it across the table, laughed aloud, and cried, “See what the fool is up to now.”

The letter was a summons to the county court. Josiah was accused of defiling a graveyard. Julia trembled, and her prayer turned into a succession of misgivings. How on earth could he defend himself? It was God's truth that he had dug up and removed the casket of Deacon Sweetser and buried it somewhere else. How could there be any defense against the truth? And surely it was only the beginning. Before long, they would accuse him of the theft of church property, the removal of all the valuable wood from the fallen chestnut tree. And what about the theft of an entire congregation? The abduction of living men and women? Julia prayed that Josiah's boisterous excitement would settle down into the quiet common sense of a man whose wits were not astray.