Harvard Yard by William Martin Page B

incapable only of listening to logic, but he would not venture into such places.
    She said, “Simply tell me why you are leaving me to go to London when my father has offered you a position.”
    “For the stipend. And . . . other reasons.”
    She furrowed her brow. “What other reasons?”
    “To fulfill my promise to John Harvard.” He paused, hoping he had said enough.
    She looked at him, her brows a single hard line across her forehead.
    So he said, “I must bring back a book that Eaton carried off.”
    “A book? What book? What book could be so important?”
    “’Tisn’t the book but the promise. The book be mere trifle. But as I told you, a . . . a man will be known by his books.”
    “A man will be known by his trifles, you mean. You go to London to pursue a trifle. A book of poems? Love sonnets, perhaps? If so, be sure to read them. For you have need of tutoring in the ways of love. . . . Now, what is the book?”
    He might have dissembled, but he decided on the truth, in hopes of drawing her into his pursuit. “I’ll tell you, if you agree to keep it secret.”
    “If you do not tell me, I shall agree never to speak to you again. And if you go, you’ll be gone months, and John Howell makes warm eyes at me every Sabbath.”
    So Isaac took a deep breath and said, “The book is a play.”
    “A play!” she cried. “What kind of play? A modern play?”
    And he decided that he had told enough truth. Mention of Shakespeare would only bring more anger from a good Puritan girl. So he told her it was by Aeschylus, to serve in teaching students their Greek. “The title,” he said, “is not important.”
    “And by the look of things,” she answered, “neither am I.”
    All summer, Isaac had been preparing for membership in the Cambridge church. Sabbath attendance was required of all, but to join the church as a full member, one had to study Reverend Shepard’s Theology of Conversion, learn all the steps from Election to Illumination of the Spirit, appear before the elders, then confess conversion before the congregation. With a long voyage ahead, Isaac wished to take the final step, and Reverend Shepard agreed, despite Isaac’s youth.
    So, on the Sabbath before his leaving, Isaac walked through a heavy rain, down Water Street to the meetinghouse, all the while rehearsing his confession.
    At the appropriate moment, he was summoned to stand before the congregation. With the sound of the rain and the smell of wet wool so strong that they seemed to bear weight, he looked out on the familiar faces of his world—Reverend Shepard, President Dunster, Diggory Venn and Samuel Day, Master Nicholson and his wife, and finally, Katharine, her expression set hard in a gray mortar of disappointment.
    “As I go to England,” he began, “I will carry the Lord with me. He is my strength and my shield. But I confess that it was not always thus, for the Lord saw fit to cast my father into the deep, and I didst cry out with all the despair of Job, all the anger of one who sees not the Lord’s grander designs but only his earthly outcomes.”
    All were listening closely, and Reverend Shepard was writing furiously, for he copied down the words of every confession.
    “My anger remained until my mother and I reached these shores, like the Jews of Exodus. And then, when my soul didst sink to its lowest ebb, the Lord held forth testimony of His love in the person of John Harvard, who showed me that God’s ways are not always to be understood but are always to be accepted. Now my chiefest desire is that I may live to honor Him.” His speech, which continued in this vein for some time more, brought murmuring approval and nodding heads, and he sat, confident of his acceptance.
    “Thank you, Isaac,” said Reverend Shepard. “We beseech the Lord’s blessing as you sail to serve our School of the Prophets. Now then, my brethren, Isaac Wedge has been propounded to you, desiring to enter church fellowship. If any of you know