The situation had begun to unfold itself to Theron from the outset.He had recognized the episodes of the forbidden Sunday milk and of the flowers in poor Alice's bonnet as typical of much more that was to come.
No week followed without bringing some new fulfilment of this foreboding.Now, at the end of two months, he knew well enough that the hitherto dominant minority was hostile to him and his ministry, and would do whatever it could against him.
Though Theron at once decided to show fight, and did not at all waver in that resolve, his courage was in the main of a despondent sort.Sometimes it would flutter up to the point of confidence, or at least hopefulness, when he met with substantial men of the church who obviously liked him, and whom he found himself mentally ranging on his side, in the struggle which was to come.
But more often it was blankly apparent to him that, the moment flags were flying and drums on the roll, these amiable fair-weather friends would probably take to their heels.
Still, such as they were, his sole hope lay in their support.
He must make the best of them.He set himself doggedly to the task of gathering together all those who were not his enemies into what, when the proper time came, should be known as the pastor's party.There was plenty of apostolic warrant for this.If there had not been, Theron felt that the mere elementary demands of self-defence would have justified his use of strategy.
The institution of pastoral calling, particularly that inquisitorial form of it laid down in the Discipline, had never attracted Theron.He and Alice had gone about among their previous flocks in quite a haphazard fashion, without thought of system, much less of deliberate purpose.
Theron made lists now, and devoted thought and examination to the personal tastes and characteristics of the people to be cultivated.There were some, for example, who would expect him to talk pretty much as the Discipline ordained--that is, to ask if they had family prayer, to inquire after their souls, and generally to minister grace to his hearers--and these in turn subdivided themselves into classes, ranging from those who would wish nothing else to those who needed only a mild spiritual flavor.
There were others whom he would please much better by not talking shop at all.Although he could ill afford it, he subscribed now for a daily paper that he might have a perpetually renewed source of good conversational topics for these more worldly calls.He also bought several pounds of candy, pleasing in color, but warranted to be entirely harmless, and he made a large mysterious mark on the inside of his new silk hat to remind him not to go out calling without some of this in his pocket for the children.
Alice, he felt, was not helping him in this matter as effectively as he could have wished.Her attitude toward the church in Octavius might best be described by the word "sulky." Great allowance was to be made, he realized, for her humiliation over the flowers in her bonnet.That might justify her, fairly enough, in being kept away from meeting now and again by headaches, or undefined megrims.But it ought not to prevent her from going about and making friends among the kindlier parishioners who would welcome such a thing, and whom he from time to time indicated to her.She did go to some extent, it is true, but she produced, in doing so, an effect of performing a duty.He did not find traces anywhere of her having created a brilliant social impression.
When they went out together, he was peculiarly conscious of having to do the work unaided.
This was not at all like the Alice of former years, of other charges.Why, she had been, beyond comparison, the most popular young woman in Tyre.What possessed her to mope like this in Octavius?
Theron looked at her attentively nowadays, when she was unaware of his gaze, to try if her face offered any answer to the riddle.It could not be suggested that she was ill.
Never in her life had she been looking so well.She had thrown herself, all at once, and with what was to him an unaccountable energy, into the creation and management of a flower-garden.She was out the better part of every day, rain or shine, digging, transplanting, pruning, pottering generally about among her plants and shrubs.
This work in the open air had given her an aspect of physical well-being which it was impossible to be mistaken about.
Her husband was glad, of course, that she had found some occupation which at once pleased her and so obviously conduced to health.This was so much a matter of course, in fact, that he said to himself over and over again that he was glad.Only--only, sometimes the thought WOULDforce itself upon his attention that if she did not spend so much of her time in her own garden, she would have more time to devote to winning friends for them in the Garden of the Lord--friends whom they were going to need badly.
The young minister, in taking anxious stock of the chances for and against him, turned over often in his mind the fact that he had already won rank as a pulpit orator.
His sermons had attracted almost universal attention at Tyre, and his achievement before the Conference at Tecumseh, if it did fail to receive practical reward, had admittedly distanced all the other preaching there.
It was a part of the evil luck pursuing him that here in this perversely enigmatic Octavius his special gift seemed to be of no use whatever.There were times, indeed, when he was tempted to think that bad preaching was what Octavius wanted.
Somewhere he had heard of a Presbyterian minister, in charge of a big city church, who managed to keep well in with a watchfully Orthodox congregation, and at the same time establish himself in the affections of the community at large, by simply preaching two kinds of sermons.In the morning, when almost all who attended were his own communicants, he gave them very cautious and edifying doctrinal discourses, treading loyally in the path of the Westminster Confession.
