Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/84

76 Another long sigh from Susan. Mrs. D tossed her contemptuous chin, and expressed scorn in divers significant ways.

“I should want to conceal a little, if I was in your place,” she remarked, cuttingly.

“Truth is truth; it can harm only those who are in error,” said Pendlam.

“It certainly hasn’t done you a very great amount of good.” Another toss of the contemptuous chin.

“On the contrary, it has done me incalculable good,” answered the son-in-law, with a smile.

“Oh! you consider it good, then, to be cut off from the church,—to give up a good situation and sure salary,—to lose the respect of everybody whose respect is worth having!”

“If I have done all this for the truth’s sake, it is good,”—the reformer’s face kindled with enthusiasm,—“and I for one find it good.

“Perhaps you do, but I know who don’t. I believe reform, like charity, begins at home. You talk of your duty to humanity; I believe the first duty is to one’s own family. I don’t think much of that man’s mission to the world, who forgets his own wife and child.”

Horatio had previously told me, what I could hardly believe, that Mrs. D was accustomed to abuse her son-in-law in this way, in the presence of strangers. Susan did nothing but sigh. Pendlam smiled, as if he was used to it.

“I need a little such invective occasionally, to refresh my zeal,” he said, with provoking meekness. “It shows me where I am. It assures me that I am fighting the good fight. I do not blame my good mother; she is worldly-minded, and sees things from her stand-point. Neither she nor Susan can perceive anything but loss and disgrace, in the change from the handsome, fashionable church, where I used to preach, to the naked hail where our new society holds its meetings. Very natural for people upon their plane. But I view things from another stand-point, to which I have been led step by step; and I have simply to be true to my own revealed mission.”

“Mission! revealed! step by step! planes and stand-points!” exclaimed Mrs. D, rising in great disgust. “For my part, I believe in common sense; I don’t know any other plane or stand-point, and I don’t believe Providence ever intended we should have any other. There, you have my opinion!” And with a violent gesture, as if throwing her opinion from her, and shutting our little party into the room with that formidable object, she swept out, slammed the door after her, and rustled remorselessly up stairs.

“Persons upon her plane are very much to be pitied,” observed Pendlam, quietly.

Susan began to cry, and the scene became so painful to me, that I made haste to shake hands with the ill-mated couple, say a few soothing words, and take leave of them. From that time, I saw Pendlam occasionally, but avoided the house. It was a peculiarity of his impressible nature, to imbibe, unconsciously to himself, the sentiments of powerful persons with whom he came in contact, retain and revolve them in his intellect, until they reappeared as his own original convictions. He now went with reformers, and carried with him their atmosphere. To hear him talk, you would have thought universal reorganization at hand. I said I avoided the house; but one day Horatio came to me with a doleful face, backing a petition that I would go and talk with Susan.

“There has been an explosion! The old woman is gone; she has declared open, internecine war against Pendlam.”

“I thought she had declared that some time ago, good Horatio!”

“Ah, but now she is trying to get his wife away from him! She has sent plenipotentiaries, with threats and entreaties, and they have frightened Susan out of her poor little wits. Go and reassure her.”

“Horatio, I am not certain what would be best. They never belonged together.