“I thought the monshure would say so. The last molasses that we had was excellent good.
It isn’t likely that you have any more of it on hand?”
“Ah! oui; ees, sair,” returned Monsieur Le Quoi, with a slight shrug of his shoulder, and a trifling grimace, “dere is more.
I feel ver happi dat you love eet.
I hope dat Madame Doleet’ is in good ‘ealth.”
“Why, so as to be stirring,” said Hiram.
“The squire hasn’t finished the plans for the inside of the meeting house yet?”
“No—no—no,” returned Richard, speaking quickly, but making a significant pause between each negative—.. “it requires reflection.
There is a great deal of room to fill up, and I am afraid we shall not know how to dispose of it to advantage.
There will be a large vacant spot around the pulpit, which I do not mean to place against the wall, like a sentry-box stuck up on the side of a fort.”
“It is rulable to put the deacons’ box under the pulpit,” said Hiram; and then, as if he had ventured too much, he added, “but there’s different fashions in different Countries.”
“That there is,” cried Benjamin; “now, in running down the coast of Spain and Portingall, you may see a nunnery stuck out on every headland, with more steeples and outriggers such as dog-vanes and weathercocks, than you’ll find aboard of a three-masted schooner.
If so be that a well-built church is wanting, old England, after all, is the country to go to after your models and fashion pieces.
As to Paul’s, thof I’ve never seen it, being that it’s a long way up town from Radcliffe Highway and the docks, yet everybody knows that it’s the grandest place in the world Now, I’ve no opinion but this here church over there is as like one end of it as a grampus is to a whale; and that’s only a small difference in bulk.
Mounsheer Ler Quaw, here, has been in foreign parts; and thof that is not the same as having been at home, yet he must have seen churches in France too, and can form a small idee of what a church should be; now I ask the mounsheer to his face if it is not a clever little thing, taking it by and large.”
“It ees ver apropos of saircumstance,” said the Frenchman—“ver judgment—but it is in the catholique country dat dey build dc—vat you call—ah a ah-ha—la grande cathedrale—de big church.
St. Paul, Londre, is ver fine; ver belle; ver grand—vat you call beeg; but, Monsieur Ben, pardonnez-moi, it is no vort so much as Notre Dame.”
“Ha! mounsheer, what is that you say?” cried Benjamin;
“St. Paul’s church is not worth so much as a damn!
Mayhap you may be thinking too that the Royal Billy isn’t so good a ship as the Billy de Paris; but she would have licked two of her any day, and in all weathers.”
As Benjamin had assumed a very threatening kind of attitude, flourishing an arm with a bunch at the end of it that was half as big as Monsieur Le Quoi’s head, Richard thought it time to interpose his authority.
“Hush, Benjamin, hush,” he said; “you both misunderstand Monsieur Le Quoi and forget yourself. But here comes Mr. Grant, and the service will commence.
Let us go in.”
The Frenchman, who received Benjamin’s reply with a well-bred good-humor that would not admit of any feeling but pity for the other’s ignorance, bowed in acquiescence and followed his companion.
Hiram and the major-domo brought up the rear, the latter grumbling as he entered the building:
“If so be that the king of France had so much as a house to live in that would lay alongside of Paul’s, one might put up with their jaw.
It’s more than flesh and blood can bear to hear a Frenchman run down an English church in this manner.
Why, Squire Doolittle, I’ve been at the whipping of two of them in one day—clean built, snug frigates with standing royals and them new-fashioned cannonades on their quarters—such as, if they had only Englishmen aboard of them, would have fout the devil.”
With this ominous word in his mouth Benjamin entered the church.
CHAPTER XI.
“And fools who came to scoff, remained to pray.”
—Goldsmith.
Notwithstanding the united labors of Richard and Benjamin, the “long room” was but an extremely inartificial temple.
Benches; made in the coarsest manner, and entirely with a view to usefulness, were arranged in rows for the reception of the Congregation; while a rough, unpainted box was placed against the wall, in the centre of the length of the apartment, as an apology for a pulpit.
Something like a reading-desk was in front of this rostrum; and a small mahogany table from the mansion-house, covered with a spotless damask cloth, stood a little on one side, by the way of an altar.
Branches of pines and hemlocks were stuck in each of the fissures that offered in the unseasoned and hastily completed woodwork of both the building and its furniture; while festoons and hieroglyphics met the eye in vast profusion along the brown sides of the scratch-coated walls.
As the room was only lighted by some ten or fifteen miserable candles, and the windows were without shutters, it would have been but a dreary, cheerless place for the solemnities of a Christmas eve, had not the large fire that was crackling at each end of the apartment given an air of cheerfulness to the scene, by throwing an occasional glare of light through the vistas of bushes and faces.
The two sexes were separated by an area in the centre of the room immediately before the pulpit; amid a few benches lined this space, that were occupied by the principal personages of the village and its vicinity.
This distinction was rather a gratuitous concession made by the poorer and less polished part of the population than a right claimed by the favored few.
One bench was occupied by the party of Judge Temple, including his daughter, and, with the exception of Dr. Todd, no one else appeared willing to incur the imputation of pride, by taking a seat in what was, literally, the high place of the tabernacle.
Richard filled the chair that was placed behind another table, in the capacity of clerk; while Benjamin, after heaping sundry logs on the fire, posted himself nigh by, in reserve for any movement that might require co-operation.
It would greatly exceed our limits to attempt a description of the congregation, for the dresses were as various as the individuals.
Some one article of more than usual finery, and perhaps the relic of other days, was to be seen about most of the females, in connection with the coarse attire of the woods.
This wore a faded silk, that had gone through at least three generations, over coarse, woollen black stockings; that, a shawl, whose dyes were as numerous as those of the rainbow, over an awkwardly fitting gown of rough brown “woman’s wear.”
In short, each one exhibited some favorite article, and all appeared in their best, both men and women; while the ground-works in dress, in either sex, were the coarse fabrics manufactured within their own dwellings.
One man appeared in the dress of a volunteer company of artillery, of which he had been a member in the “down countries,” precisely for no other reason than because it was the best suit he had.
Several, particularly of the younger men, displayed pantaloons of blue, edged with red cloth down the seams part of the equipments of the “Templeton Light Infantry,” from a little vanity to be seen in “boughten clothes.”
There was also one man in a “rifle frock,” with its fringes and folds of spotless white, striking a chill to the heart with the idea of its coolness, although the thick coat of brown “home-made” that was concealed beneath preserved a proper degree of warmth.
There was a marked uniformity of expression in Countenance, especially in that half of the congregation who did not enjoy the advantages of the polish of the village.
A sallow skin, that indicated nothing but exposure, was common to all, as was an air of great decency and attention, mingled, generally, with an expression of shrewdness, and in the present instance of active curiosity.