VESPER SERVICE
The Sunday following the Vigilantes’ mysterious discovery by the
roadside, and immediately preceding the Easter holidays, was Palm
Sunday. It dawned beautiful—warm and sunny as a late spring clay—and
as the hours followed one another, each seemed more lovely than the
last. Song sparrows sang from budding alder bushes, and robins flew
hither and thither among the elms and maples, seeking suitable notches
in which to begin their homes. As if by magic, purple and golden
crocuses lifted their tiny faces on the southern sides of the cottage
lawns; and the buds of the lilac trees, warmed and encouraged by
yesterday’s showers, burst into leaf before one’s very eyes.
The world seemed especially joyous to the girls, as they roamed the
woods in search of wild flowers, or sought about the campus for fresh
evidences of spring. The long winter months had gone; Easter
home-going was but five days away; and when they returned after two
weeks at home, spring would have really come, bringing with it all the
joys and festivities and sadnesses of the Commencement season.
At four o’clock, as the westward-moving sun gleamed through the pines,
and fell in wavering lights and shadows on the brown needles beneath,
they gathered for their vesper service, coming from all directions,
their hands filled with pussy-willows, hepaticas, and mayflowers,
their faces glowing with health and happiness, in their eyes the old
miracle of the spring. To Virginia, as to many of the others, this
Sunday afternoon hour was the dearest of the week. She loved the
gray-stone, vine-covered Retreat, and its little chapel within; she
loved the sound of its organ, and the voices of the girls singing; and
most of all, she loved the little talks which Miss King gave on Sunday
afternoons—dear, close, helpful talks of things which she had learned,
and by which she hoped to make life sweeter for her girls.
To-day the chapel was especially lovely, for the altar rail was banked
with palms, Easter lilies stood upon the white-covered altar, and the
sun, shining through the high, narrow windows, flooded all with golden
light. Virginia sat between Dorothy and Priscilla, holding a hand of
each. It was so lovely to be there together! In her secret heart she
was glad that Imogene’s mother had sent for her to come home the day
before, for when Imogene was away Dorothy seemed to belong again to
them.
Since St. Helen’s held no Easter service, as the girls were always at
home, Miss King spoke to-day of Easter—how it had always seemed to her
the real beginning of the New Year; how it signified the leaving off
of the old and the putting on of the new; how it meant the awakening
of new thoughts, and the renewed striving after better things.
“So, if we could only understand,” she said in closing, while
the girls listened earnestly, “that Easter is far more than a
commemoration, that it is a condition of our hearts, then we should,
I think, reverence the day rightly. For as beautiful as is the story
of the risen Christ, we do not keep Easter sacred merely by the
remembrance of that story. The risen Christ is as nothing to us
unless in our own hearts the Christ spirit rises—the spirit of love
and service, of unselfishness and goodness. When that spirit awakens
within us, then comes our Easter day. It may be many days throughout
the year; it might be—if we could only rightly appreciate our
lives—it might be every day. For every day is a fresh beginning, an
Easter day, when we may decide to cast off the old and to put on the
new, the old habits of selfishness and jealousy, of insincerity and
thoughtlessness—all those petty, little things that mar our lives; and
to put on our new and whiter robes of unselfishness and simple
sincerity. If the thousands who next Sunday morning will sing of the
risen Christ, might all experience within themselves their own Easter
mornings, then this world of ours would have realized its
resurrection.
“Let the hepaticas which you hold in your hands give you the only
Easter lesson worth the learning—the lesson which your pagan
forefathers in the forests of Germany taught their children centuries
ago on their own Easter festival. You know how each spring the
clusters beneath the pines are larger, if you are careful as you pick
the blossoms not to disturb the roots. The long months of fall and
winter are not months of sleep and rest for the hepaticas. Beneath the
snow in the winter silence they are at work, sending out their
rootlets through the brown earth, avoiding the rocks and sandy places,
but taking firm hold upon that which will nourish them best. Thus do
they grow year by year, at each Easter time showing themselves larger
and more beautiful than the spring before.
“This is the Easter lesson which I wish you girls might all take to
yourselves. As in the winter silence of the earth, the hepaticas send
out their rootlets toward the best soil, so in the silence of your own
inner lives are you here and now also sending out rootlets, either
toward the soil which will give you a healthful, wholesome growth, or
toward the barren places where you must cease to grow. Avoid the rocks
of indolence and evil influence, the waste places of selfishness; but
reach far out for the good, wholesome soil of good books, of a love
and knowledge of the out-of-doors, of friends who make you better, of
study which will enrich your lives. And as the flowers find themselves
more firmly rooted year by year, so will you find yourselves growing
in strength and self-control, in sincerity and firmness of purpose.
Then, and only then, will you experience the real Easter—the awakening
to the realization in your hearts that you, through your own seeking,
have found that better part, which can never be taken away from you.”
In the silence that followed, while the organ played softly, Virginia
touched with gentle fingers the tiny hepaticas in her lap. Was she
sending out rootlets toward the right soil, she wondered? In the years
to come would people seek her, as she sought the hepaticas in the
spring, because she had found that “better part”? “That is why we go
to Miss King and Miss Wallace,” she thought to herself, “because they
have found the best soil, and have grown sweeter every year.” And,
deep in her heart, she resolved to try harder than ever to avoid the
rocks and the sand, and to send her rootlets deep down into the soil
which Miss King had described.
Then she heard Dorothy by her side ask if they might sing the hymn of
her choosing, and they rose to sing words which somehow held to-day a
new and deeper meaning:
“Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our feverish ways;
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.”
Silently they all passed out of the little chapel, and turned
homeward. The sun, sinking lower, cast long shadows among the pines,
and gilded with a farewell glow the chapel windows. Virginia,
Priscilla, and Dorothy took the woodsy path that led to the campus. No
one cared to talk very much. When they reached The Hermitage Dorothy
went with them to their room; and as they filled bowls of water for
the tired little hepaticas, and arranged them thoughtfully, for they
some way seemed more like persons than ever before, she said all at
once—looking out of the window to hide her embarrassment:
“I just thought I’d tell you that I know I haven’t been growing in
very good soil this year; but I’m going to put out new roots now, and
I’m not going to send them into sand either.”
The two Vigilantes dropped the hepaticas and hugged Dorothy hard
without saying a word. Then, with their arms around one another’s
shoulders, they stood by the western window, and watched the sun set
behind the hills—happier than they had been for weeks.