John Ward, Preacher

John Ward, Preacher

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Title: John Ward, Preacher
Author: Margaret Deland
Release Date: May 31, 2006 [EBook #18478]
Language: English
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JOHN WARD, PREACHER
BY MARGARET DELAND
AUTHOR OF "THE OLD GARDEN"

I sent my soul through the invisible, Some letter of that after-life to
spell; And by and by my soul returned to me, And answered, "I myself
am Heav'n and Hell"
Omar Khayyám

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1888, By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights
reserved.

To LORIN DELAND This Book ALREADY MORE HIS THAN
MINE IS DEDICATED.
Boston, December 25th, 1887.

JOHN WARD, PREACHER.
CHAPTER I.
The evening before Helen Jeffrey's wedding day, the whole household
at the rectory came out into the garden.
"The fact is," said Dr. Howe, smiling good-naturedly at his niece, "the
importance of this occasion has made everybody so full of suppressed
excitement one can't breathe in the house."
And indeed a wedding in Ashurst had all the charm of novelty. "Why,
bless my soul," said the rector, "let me see: it must be ten--no, twelve
years since Mary Drayton was married, and that was our last wedding.
Well, we couldn't stand such dissipation oftener; it would wake us up."
But Ashurst rather prided itself upon being half asleep. The rush and

life of newer places had a certain vulgarity; haste was undignified, it
was almost ill bred, and the most striking thing about the village,
resting at the feet of its low green hills, was its atmosphere of leisure
and repose.
Its grassy road was nearly two miles long, so that Ashurst seemed to
cover a great deal of ground, though there were really very few houses.
A lane, leading to the rectory, curled about the foot of East Hill at one
end of the road, and at the other was the brick-walled garden of the
Misses Woodhouse.
Between these extremes the village had slowly grown; but its first
youth was so far past, no one quite remembered it, and even the trying
stage of middle age was over, and its days of growth were ended. This
was perhaps because of its distance from the county town, for Mercer
was twelve miles away, and there was no prospect of a railroad to unite
them. It had been talked of once; some of the shopkeepers, as well as
Mr. Lash, the carpenter, advocated it strenuously at Bulcher's grocery
store in the evenings, because, they said, they were at the mercy of
Phibbs, the package man, who brought their wares on his slow,
creaking cart over the dusty turnpike from Mercer. But others, looking
into the future, objected to a convenience which might result in a
diminution of what little trade they had. Among the families, however,
who did not have to consider "trade" there was great unanimity, though
the Draytons murmured something about the increased value of the
land; possibly not so much with a view to the welfare of Ashurst as
because their property extended along the proposed line of the road.
The rector was very firm in his opinion. "Why," said he, mopping his
forehead with his big silk handkerchief, "what do we want with a
railroad? My grandfather never thought of such a thing, so I think I can
get along without it, and it is a great deal better for the village not to
have it."
It would have cut off one corner of his barn; and though this could not
have interfered with the material or spiritual welfare of Ashurst, Dr.
Howe's opinion never wavered. And the rector but expressed the
feelings of the other "families," so that all Ashurst was conscious of

relief when the projectors of the railroad went no further than to make a
cut at one end of the Drayton pastures; and that was so long ago that
now the earth, which had shown a ragged yellow wound across the soft
greenness of the meadows, was sown by sweet clover and wild roses,
and gave no sign of ever having been gashed by picks and shovels.
The Misses Woodhouse's little orchard of gnarled and wrinkled
apple-trees came to the edge of the cut on one side, and then sloped
down to the kitchen garden and back door of their old house, which in
front was