Ascension lilies were everywhere in our shabby drawing-room. They
crowded two tables and filled a corner and rose, slim and white, atop
a Sheraton cabinet. Every one had sent Pelleas and me a sheaf of the
flowers--the Chartres, the Cleatams, Miss Willie Lillieblade, Enid,
Lisa and dear Hobart Eddy had all remembered us on Easter eve, and
we entered our drawing-room after breakfast on Easter morning to be
all but greeted with a winding of the white trumpets. The sun smote
them and they were a kind of candle, their light secretly diffused,
premonitory of Spring, of some resurrection of light as a new element.
It was a wonderful Easter day, and in spite of our sad gray hair
Pelleas and I were never in fairer health; yet for the first time in
our fifty years together Easter found us close prisoners. Easter
morning, and we were forbidden to leave the house!
“Etarre,” Pelleas said, with some show of firmness, “there is no reason
in the world why we should not go.”
“Ah, well now,” I said with a sigh, “I wish you could prove that to
Nichola. Do I not know it perfectly already?”
It is one sign of our advancing years, we must suppose, that we are
prone to predicate of each other the trifles which heaven sends. The
sterner things we long ago learned to accept with our hands clasped in
each other’s; but when the postman is late or the hot water is cold or
we miss our paper we have a way of looking solemnly sidewise.
We had gone upstairs the night before in the best of humours, Pelleas
carrying an Ascension lily to stand in the moonlight of our window,
for it always seems to us the saddest injustice to set the sullen
extinguisher of lowered lights on the brief life of a flower. And we
had been looking forward happily to Easter morning when the service is
always inseparable from a festival of Spring. Then, lo! when we were
awakened there was the treacherous world one glitter of ice. Branches
sparkled against the blue, the wall of the park was a rampart of silver
and the faithless sidewalks were mockeries of thoroughfare. But the
grave significance of this did not come to us until Nichola entered
the dining-room with the griddle-cakes and found me dressed in my gray
silk and Pelleas in broadcloth.
“Is it,” asked our old serving-woman, who rules us as if she had
brought us from Italy and we had not, more than forty years before,
tempted her from her native Capri, “is it that you are mad, with this
ice everywhere, everywhere?”
“It is Easter morning, Nichola,” I said, with the mildness of one who
supports a perfect cause.
“Our Lady knows it is so,” Nichola said, setting down her smoking
burden, “but the streets are so thick with ice that one breaks one’s
head a thousand times. You must not think of so much as stepping in the
ar-y.”
She left the room, and the honey-brown cakes cooled while Pelleas and I
looked at each other aghast. To miss our Easter service for the first
time in our life together! The thought was hardly to be borne. We
reasoned with Nichola when she came back and I think that Pelleas even
stamped his foot under the table; but she only brought more cakes and
shook her head, the impertinent old woman who has conceived that she
must take care of us.
“One breaks one’s head a thousand times,” she obstinately repeated.
“Our Lady would not wish it. Danger is not holy.”
To tell the truth, as Pelleas and I looked sorrowfully from the
window above the Ascension lilies we knew that there was reason in the
situation, for the streets were perilous even to see. None the less we
were frankly resentful, for it is bad enough to have a disagreeable
matter occur without having reason on its side. As for our carriage,
that went long ago together with the days when Pelleas could model and
I could write so that a few were deceived; and as for a cab to our far
downtown church and back, that was not to be considered. For several
years now we have stepped, as Nichola would say, softly, softly from
one security to another so that we need not give up our house; and even
now we are seldom sure that one month’s comfort will keep its troth
with the next. Since it was too icy to walk to the car we must needs
remain where we were.
“I suppose,” said I, as if it were a matter of opinion, “that it is
really Easter uptown too. But some way--”
“I know,” Pelleas said. Really, of all the pleasures of this world I
think that the “I know” of Pelleas in answer to something I have left
unsaid is the last to be foregone. I hope that there is no one who does
not have this delight.
“Pelleas--” I began tremblingly to suggest.
“Ah, well now,” Pelleas cried, resolutely, “let us go anyway. We
can walk beside the curb slowly. And after all, we do not belong to
Nichola.” Really, of all the pleasures of this world I think that the
daring of Pelleas in moments when I am cowardly is quite the last to
be renounced. I hope that there is no one who has not the delight of
living near some one a bit braver than himself.
With one accord we slipped from the drawing-room and toiled up the
stairs. I think, although we would not for the world have said so,
that there may have been in our minds the fear that this might be our
last Easter together and, if it was to be so, then to run away to
Easter service would be a fitting memory, a little delicious human
thing to recall among austerer glories. Out of its box in a twinkling
came my violet bonnet and I hardly looked in a mirror as I put it
on. I fastened my cloak wrong from top to bottom and seized two
right-hand gloves and thrust them in my muff. Then we opened the door
and listened. There was not a sound in the house. We ventured into
the passage and down the stairs, and I think we did not breathe until
the outer door closed softly upon us. For Nichola, we have come to
believe, is a mystic and thinks other people’s thoughts. At all events,
she finds us out so often that we prefer to theorize that it is her
penetration and not our clumsiness which betrays us.
Nichola had already swept the steps with hot water and salt and ashes
and sawdust combined; Nichola is so thorough that I am astonished she
has not corrupted me with the quality. Yet no sooner was I beyond
the pale of her friendly care than I overestimated thoroughness, like
the weak character that I am, and wished that the whole street had
practiced it. I took three steps on that icy surface and stood still,
desperately.
“Pelleas,” I said, weakly, “I feel--I feel like a little nut on top of
a big, frosted, indigestible cake.”
I laughed a bit hysterically and Pelleas slipped my arm more firmly in
his and we crept forward like the hands of a clock, Pelleas a little
the faster, as became the tall minute hand. We turned the corner safely
and had one interminable block to traverse before we reached the haven
of the car. I looked down that long expanse of slippery gray, unbroken
save where a divine janitor or two had interposed, and my courage
failed me. And Pelleas rashly ventured on advice.
“You walk too stiffly, Etarre,” he explained. “Relax, relax! Step
along slowly but easily, as I do. Then, if you fall, you fall like a
child--no jar, no shock, no broken bones. Now relax--”
And Pelleas did so. Before I could shape my answer Pelleas had relaxed.
He lay in a limp little heap on the ice beside me, and I shall never
forget my moment of despair.
I do not know where she came from, but while I stood there hopelessly
reiterating, “Pelleas--why, Pelleas!” on the verge of tears, she
stepped from some door of the air to my assistance. She wore a little
crimson hat and a crimson collar, but her poor coat, I afterward noted,
was sadly worn. At the moment of her coming it was her clear, pale face
that fixed itself in my grateful memory. She darted forward, stepped
down from the curb and held out two hands to Pelleas.
“Oh, sir,” she said, “I can help you. I have on rubber boots.”
Surely no interfering goddess ever arrived in a more practical frame of
mind.
When Pelleas was on his feet, looking about him in a dazed and rather
unforgiving fashion, the little maid caught off her crimson muffler and
brushed his coat. Pelleas, with bared head, made her as courtly a bow
as his foothold permitted, and she continued to stand somewhat shyly
before us with the prettiest anxiety on her face, shaking the snow from
her crimson muffler.
“You are not hurt, sir?” she asked, and seemed so vastly relieved at
his reassurance that she quite won our hearts. “Now,” she said, “won’t
you let me walk with you? My rubber boots will do for all three.”
We each accepted her arm without the smallest protest. I will hazard
that no shipwrecked sailor ever inquired of the rescuing sail whether
he was inconveniencing it. Once safely aboard, however, and well under
way, he may have symbolized his breeding to the extent of offering a
faint, polite resistance.
As “Shall we not be putting you out?” Pelleas inquired, never offering
to release her arm.
And “I’m afraid we are,” I ventured, pressing to her all the closer.
She was frail as I, too, and it was not the rubber boots to which I
pinned my faith; she was young, and you can hardly know what safety
that bespeaks until you are seventy, on ice.
“It’s just there, on the south corner of the avenue,” Pelleas explained
apologetically, and for the first time I perceived that by common
consent we had turned back toward home. But neither of us mentioned
that.
Then, as we stepped forward, with beautiful nicety rounding the corner
to come upon our entrance, suddenly, without a moment’s warning, our
blackest fears were fulfilled. We ran full upon Nichola.
“Ah, I told you, Pelleas!” I murmured; which I had not, but one has to
take some comfort in crises.
Without a word Nichola wheeled solemnly, grasped my other arm and made
herself fourth in our singular party. Her gray head was unprotected and
her hair stood out all about it. She had thrown her apron across her
shoulders and great patches in her print gown were visible to all the
world. When Nichola’s sleeves wear out she always cuts a piece from
the front breadth of her skirt to mend them, trusting to her aprons to
conceal the lack. She was a sorry old figure indeed, out there on the
avenue in the Easter sunshine, and I inclined bitterly to resent her
interference.
“Nichola,” said I, haughtily, “one would think that we were obliged to
be wheeled about on casters.”
Nichola made but brief reply.
“Our Lady knows you’d be better so,” she said.
So that was how, on Easter morning, with the bells pealing like a
softer silver across the silver of the city, Pelleas and I found
ourselves back in our lonely drawing-room considerably shaken and
hovering before the fire which Nichola stirred to a leaping blaze.
And with us, since we had insisted on her coming, was our new little
friend, fluttering about us with the prettiest concern, taking away my
cloak, untying my bonnet and wheeling an arm-chair for Pelleas, quite
as if she were the responsible little hostess and we her upset guests.
Presently, the bright hat and worn coat laid aside, she sat on a
hassock before the blaze and looked up at us, like a little finch that
had alighted at our casement and had been coaxed within. I think that
I love best these little bird-women whom one expects at any moment to
hear thrilling with a lilt of unreasonable song.
“My dear,” said I, on a sudden, “how selfish of us. I dare say you will
have been going to church?”
She hesitated briefly.
“I might ’a’ gone to the mission,” she explained, unaccountably
colouring, “but I don’t know if I would. On Easter.”
“But I should have thought,” I cried, “that this is the day of days to
go.”
“It would be,” she assented, “it would be--” she went on, hesitating,
“but, ma’am, I can’t bear to go,” she burst out, “because they don’t
have no flowers. We go to the mission,” she added, “and not to the
grand churches. And it seems--it seems--don’t you think God must be
where the most flowers are? An’ last Easter we only had one geranium.”
Bless the child. I must be a kind of pagan, for I understood.
“Your flowers are beau-tiful,” she said, shyly, with a breath of
content. “Are they real? I’ve been wantin’ to ask you. I never saw so
many without the glass in front. But they don’t smell much,” she added,
wistfully; “I wonder why that is?”
Pelleas and I had been wondering that very morning. They looked so
sweet-scented and yet were barren of fragrance; and we had told
ourselves that perhaps they were lilies of symbol without mission
or message beyond the symbol, without hue or passion or, so to say,
experience.
“Perhaps if one were to make some one happy with them or to put them in
a bride’s bouquet they would no longer be scentless,” Pelleas quaintly
said.
But now my mind was busy with other problems than those of such
fragrance.
“Where do you go to church, my dear?” I asked, not daring to glance at
Pelleas.
“To the mission,” she said, “over--” and she named one of the poorest
of the struggling East Side chapels. “It’s just started,” she
explained, “an’ the lady that give most, she died, and the money don’t
come. And poor Mr. Lovelow, he’s the minister and he’s sick--but he
preaches, anyhow. And pretty near nobody comes to hear him,” she added,
with a curious, half-defiant emotion, her cheeks still glowing. It
was strange that I who am such a busybody of romance was so slow to
comprehend that betraying colour.
Pelleas and I knew where the mission was. We had even peeped into it
one Sunday when, though it was not quite finished, they were trying to
hold service from the unpainted pulpit. I remembered the ugly walls
covered with the lead-pencil calculations of the builders, the forlorn
reed organ, the pushing feet upon the floor. And now “the lady who give
most” had died.
“Last Easter,” our little friend was reiterating, “we had one geranium
that the minister brought. But now his mother is dead and I guess he
won’t be keeping plants. Men always lets ’em freeze. Mis’ Sledge,
she’s got a cactus, but it hasn’t bloomed yet. Maybe she’ll take that.
And they said they was going to hang up the letters left from last
Christmas, for the green. They don’t say nothing but ‘Welcome’ and
‘Star of Bethlehem,’ but I s’pose the ‘Welcome’ is always nice for a
church, and I s’pose the star shines all year round, if you look. But
they don’t much of anybody come. Mr. Lovelow, he’s too sick to visit
round much. Last Sunday they was only ’leven in the whole room.”
“Only ’leven in the whole room.” It hardly seemed credible in New York.
But I knew the poverty of some of the smaller missions, especially in
a case where “the lady that give most” has died. And this poor young
minister, this young Mr. Lovelow whose mother had died and who was
too sick to “visit round much,” and doubtless had an indifferent,
poverty-ridden parish which no other pastor wanted--I knew in an
instant the whole story of the struggle. I looked over at our pots
of Ascension lilies and I found myself unreasonably angry with the
dear Cleatams and Chartres and Hobart Eddy and the rest for the
self-indulgence of having given them to us.
At that moment my eyes met those of Pelleas. He was leaning forward,
looking at me with an expression of both daring, and doubt of my
approval, and I saw his eyes go swiftly to the lilies. What was he
contriving, I wondered, my heart beating. He was surely not thinking of
sending our lilies over to the mission, for we could never get them all
there in time and Nichola--
“Etarre!” said Pelleas--and showed me in a moment heights of
resourcefulness to which I can never attain--“Etarre! It is only half
after ten. We can’t go out to service--and the mission is not four
blocks from us. Why not have our little friend run over there and,
if there are only two dozen or so in the chapel, have that young Mr.
Lovelow bring them all over here, and let it be Easter in this room?”
He waved his hand toward the lilies waiting there all about the walls
and doing no good to any save a selfish old man and woman. He looked
at me, almost abashed at his own impulse. Was ever such a practical
Mahomet, proposing to bring to himself some Mountain Delectable?
“Do you mean,” I asked breathlessly, “to let them have services in
this--”
“Here with us, in the drawing-room,” Pelleas explained. “Why not? There
were fifty in the room for that Lenten morning musicale. There’s the
piano for the music. And the lilies--the lilies--”
“Of course we will,” I cried. “But, O, will they come? Do you think
they will come?”
I turned to our little friend, and she had risen and was waiting with
shining eyes.
“O, ma’am,” she said, trembling, “why, ma’am! O, yes’m, they’ll come.
I’ll get ’em here myself. O, Mr. Lovelow, he’ll be so glad....”
She flew to her bright hat and worn coat and crimson muffler.
“Mr. Lovelow says,” she cried, “that a shabby church is just as much
a holy temple as the ark of the gover’ment--but he was so glad when
we dyed the spread for the orgin--O, ma’am,” she broke off, knotting
the crimson scarf about her throat, “do you really want ’em? They
ain’t--you know they don’t look--”
“Hurry, child,” said Pelleas, “and mind you don’t let one of them
escape!”
When she was gone we looked at each other in panic.
“Pelleas,” I cried, trembling, “think of all there is to be done in ten
minutes.”
Pelleas brushed this aside as a mere straw in the wind.
“Think of Nichola,” he portentously amended.
In all our flurry we could not help laughing at the frenzy of our old
servant when we told her. Old Nichola was born upon the other side
of every argument. In her we can see the history of all the world
working out in a miniature of wrinkles. For Nichola would have cut off
her gray hair with Sparta, hurled herself fanatically abroad on St.
Bartholomew’s day, borne a pike before the Bastile, broken and burned
the first threshing-machine in England, stoned Luther, and helped to
sew the stars upon striped cloth in the kitchen of Betsy Ross.
“For the love of heaven,” cried Nichola, “church in the best room!
It is not holy. Whoever heard o’ church in a private house, like a
spiritualist seeonce or whatever they are. An’ me with a sponge-cake
in the oven,” she concluded fervently. “Heaven be helpful, mem, I
wish’t you’d ’a’ went to church yourselves.”
Chairs were drawn from the library and dining-room and from
above-stairs, and frantically dusted with Nichola’s apron. The lilies
were turned from the windows to look inward on the room and a little
table for the Bible was laid with a white cloth and set with a vase
of lilies. And in spite of Nichola, who every moment scolded and
prophesied and nodded her head in the certainty that all the thunders
of the church would descend upon us, we were ready when the door-bell
rang. I peeped from the drawing-room window and saw that our steps were
filled!
“Nichola,” said I, trembling, “you will come up to the service, will
you not?”
Nichola shook her old gray head.
“It’s a nonsense,” she shrilly proclaimed. “It will not be civilized.
It will not be religious. I’ll open the door on ’em, but I won’t do
nothink elst, mem.”
When we heard their garments in the hall and the voice of Little
Friend, Pelleas pushed back the curtains and there was our Easter, come
to us upon the threshold.
I shall not soon forget the fragile, gentle figure who led them. The
Reverend Stephen Lovelow came in with outstretched hand, and I have
forgotten what he said or indeed whether he spoke at all. But he took
our hands and greeted us as the disciple must have greeted the host of
that House of the Upper Room. We led the way to the table where he laid
his worn Bible and he stood in silence while the others found their
places, marshaled briskly by Little Friend who as captain was no less
efficient than as deliverer. There were chairs to spare, and when every
one was seated, in perfect quiet, the young clergyman bowed his head:--
“Lord, thou hast made thy face to shine upon us--” he prayed, and it
seemed to me that our shabby drawing-room was suddenly quick with a
presence more intimate than that of the lilies.
When the hymn was given out and there was a fluttering of leaves of
the hymn-books they had brought, five of our guests at a nod from Mr.
Lovelow made their way forward. One was a young woman with a ruddy
face, but ruddy with that strange, wrinkled ruddiness of age rather
than youth, who wore a huge felt hat laden with flaming roses evidently
added expressly for Easter day. She had on a thin waist of flimsy pink
with a collar of beads and silver braid, and there were stones of all
colours in a half-dozen rings on her hands. She took her place at the
piano with an ease almost defiant and she played the hymn not badly,
I must admit, and sang in a full riotous soprano. Meanwhile, at her
side was ranged the choir. There were four--a great watch-dog of a
bass with swelling veins upon his forehead and erect reddish hair; a
little round contralto in a plush cap and a dress trimmed with the
appliquéd flowers cut from a lace curtain; a tall, shy soprano who
looked from one to another through the hymn as if she were in personal
exhortation; and a pleasant-faced tenor who sang with a will that was
good to hear and was evidently the choir leader, for he beat time with
a stumpy, cracked hand set with a huge black ring on its middle finger.
The little woman next me offered her book and I had a glimpse of a
pinched side-face, with a displaced strand of gray hair and a loose
linen collar with no cravat, but I have seldom heard a sweeter voice
than that which up-trembled beside me--although, poor little woman!
she was sadly ill at ease because the thumb which rested on the book
next me was thrust in a glove fully an inch too long. As for Pelleas,
he was sharing a book with a youngish man, stooped, long-armed, with
a mane of black hair, whom Mr. Lovelow afterward told me had lost his
position in a sweat-shop through drawing some excellent cartoons on
the box of his machine. Mr. Lovelow himself was “looking over” with a
mother and daughter who were later presented to us, and who embarrassed
any listener by persistently talking in concert, each repeating a few
words of what the other had just said, quite in the fashion of the most
gently bred talkers bent upon assuring each other of their spontaneous
sympathy and response.
And what a hymn it was! After the first stanza they gained in
confidence, and a volume of sound filled the low room--ay, and a world
of spirit, too. “Christ the Lord is risen to-day, Hallelu--jah! ...”
they caroled, and Pelleas, who never can sing a tune aloud although he
declares indignantly that in his head he keeps it perfectly, and I, who
do not sing at all, both joined perforce in the triumphant chorus. Ah,
I dare say that farther down the avenue were sweet-voiced choirs that
sang music long rehearsed, golden, flowing, and yet I think there was
no more fervent Easter music than that in which we joined. It was as if
the other music were the censer-smoke, and we were its shadow on the
ground, but a proof of the sun for all that.
I cannot now remember all that simple service, perhaps because I so
well remember the glory of the hour. I sat where I could see the
park stretching away, black upon silver and silver upon black, over
the Ascension lilies. The face of the young minister was illumined
as he read and talked to his people. I think that I have never known
such gentleness, never such yearning and tenderness as were his with
that handful of crude and careless and devout. And though he spoke
passionately and convincingly I could not but think that he was
like some dumb thing striving for the utterance of the secret fire
within--striving to “burn aloud,” as a violin beseeches understanding.
Perhaps there is no other way to tell the story of that first day of
the week--“early, when it was yet dark.”
“They had brought sweet spices,” he said, “with which to anoint Him.
Where are the spices that we have brought to-day? Have we aught of
sacrifice, of charity, of zeal, of adoration--let us lay them at His
feet, an offering acceptable unto the Lord, a token of our presence at
the door of the sepulcher from which the stone was rolled away. Where
are the sweet spices of our hands, where the pound of ointment of
spikenard wherewith we shall anoint the feet of our living Lord? For if
we bring of our spiritual possession, the Christ will suffer us, even
as He suffered Mary; and the house shall be filled with the odour of
the ointment.”
“And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,” I said
over to myself. Is it not strange how a phrase, a vista, a bar of song,
a thought beneath the open stars, will almost pierce the veil?
“And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,” I
said silently all through the last prayer and the last hymn and the
benediction of “The Lord make his face to shine upon you, the Lord
give you peace.” And some way, with our rising, the abashment which is
an integral part of all such gatherings as we had convoked was not to
be reckoned with, and straightway the presentations and the words of
gratitude and even the pretty anxiety of Little Friend fluttering among
us were spontaneous and unconstrained. It was quite as if, Pelleas
said afterward, we had been reduced to a common denominator. Indeed,
it seems to me in remembering the day as if half the principles of
Christian sociology were illustrated there in our shabby drawing-room;
but for that matter I would like to ask what complexities of political
science, what profound bases of _solidarité_, are not on the way to
be solved in the presence of Easter lilies? I am in all these matters
most stupid and simple, but at all events I am not blameful enough to
believe that they are exhausted by the theories.
Every one lingered for a little, in proof of the success of our
venture. Pelleas and I talked with the choir and with the pianiste,
and this lady informed us that our old rosewood piano, which we
apologetically explained to have been ours for fifty years, was every
bit as good and every bit as loud as a new golden-oak “instrument”
belonging to her sister. The tall, shy soprano told us haltingly how
much she had enjoyed the hour and her words conveyed sincerity in spite
of her strange system of overemphasis of everything she said, and of
carrying down the corners of her mouth as if in deprecation. The plump
little contralto thanked us, too, with a most winning smile--such round
open eyes she had, immovably fixed on the object of her attention, and
as Pelleas said such _evident_ eyes.
“Her eyes looked so amazingly like eyes,” he afterward commented
whimsically.
We talked too with the little woman of the long-thumbed gloves who
had the extraordinary habit of smiling faintly and turning away her
head whenever she detected any one looking at her. And the sweat-shop
cartoonist proved to be an engaging young giant with the figure of a
Greek god, classic features, a manner of gravity amounting almost to
hauteur, and as pronounced an East Side dialect as I have ever heard.
“Will you not let us,” I said to him, after Mr. Lovelow’s word about
his talent, “see your drawings sometime? It would give us great
pleasure.”
Whereupon, “Sure. Me, I’ll toin de whol’ of ’em over to youse,” said
the Greek god, thumbs out and shoulders flickering.
But back of these glimpses of reality among them there was something
still more real; and though I dare say there will be some who will
smile at the affair and call that interest curiosity and those awkward
thanks mere aping of convention, yet Pelleas and I who have a modest
degree of intelligence and who had the advantage of being present do
affirm that on that Easter morning countless little doors were opened
in the air to admit a throng of presences. We cannot tell how it may
have been, and we are helpless before all argument and incredulity,
but we know that a certain stone was rolled away from the door of the
hearts of us all, and there were with us those in shining garments.
In the midst of all I turned to ask our Little Friend some trivial
thing and I saw that which made my old heart leap. Little Friend stood
before a table of the lilies and with her was young Mr. Lovelow. And
something--I cannot tell what it may have been, but in these matters
I am rarely mistaken; and something--as she looked up and he looked
down--made me know past all doubting how it was with them. And this
open secret of their love was akin to the mysteries of the day itself.
The gentle, sad young clergyman and our Little Friend of the crimson
muffler had suddenly opened to us another door and admitted another
joyous presence. I cannot tell how it may be with every one else but
for Pelleas and me one such glimpse--a glimpse of two faces alight with
happiness on the street, in a car, or wherever they may be--is enough
to make glad a whole gray week. Though to be sure no week is ever
wholly gray.
I was still busy with the sweet surprise of this and longing for
opportunity to tell Pelleas, when they all moved toward the door and
with good-byes filed into the hall. And there in the anteroom stood
Nichola, our old servant, who brushed my elbow and said in my ear:--
“Mem, every one of ’em looks starvin’. I’ve a kettle of hot coffee on
the back of the range an’ there’s fresh sponge-cake in plenty. I’ve put
cups on the dinin’-room table, an’ I thought--”
“Nichola!” said I, in a low and I must believe ecstatic tone.
“An’ no end o’ work it’s made me, too,” added our old servant sourly,
and not to be thought in the least gracious.
It was a very practical ending to that radiant Easter morning but I
dare say we could have devised none better. Moreover Nichola had ready
sandwiches and a fresh cheese of her own making, and a great bowl of
some simple salad dressed as only her Italian hands can dress it. I
wondered as I sat in the circle of our guests, a vase of Easter lilies
on the table, whether Nichola, that grim old woman who scorned to come
to our service, had yet not brought her pound of ointment of spikenard,
very precious.
“You and Mr. Lovelow are to spend the afternoon and have tea with us,”
I whispered Little Friend, and had the joy of seeing the tell-tale
colour leap gloriously to her cheek and a tell-tale happiness kindle in
his eyes. I am never free from amazement that a mere word or so humble
a plan for another’s pleasure can give such joy. Verily, one would
suppose that we would all be so busy at this pastime that we would
almost neglect our duties.
So when the others were gone these two lingered. All through the
long Spring afternoon they sat with us beside our crackling fire of
bavin-sticks, telling us of this and that homely interest, of some
one’s timid hope and another’s sacrifice, in the life of the little
mission. Ah, I dare say that Carlyle and Hugo have the master’s hand
for touching open a casement here and there and letting one look in
upon an isolated life, and sympathizing for one passionate moment
turn away before the space is closed again with darkness; but these
two were destined that day to give us glimpses not less poignant, to
open to us so many unknown hearts that we would be justified in never
again being occupied with our own concerns. And when after tea they
stood in the dusk of the hall-way trying to say good-bye, I think that
their secret must have shone in our faces too; and, as the children
say, “we all knew that we all knew,” and life was a thing of heavenly
blessedness.
Young Mr. Lovelow took the hand of Pelleas, and mine he kissed.
“The Lord bless you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, the Lord
give you peace,” was in his eyes as he went away.
“And, O, sir,” Little Friend said shyly to Pelleas as she stood at the
top of the steps, knotting her crimson muffler, “ain’t it good, after
all, that Easter was all over ice?”
* * * * *
That night Pelleas carried upstairs a great armful of the Ascension
lilies to stand in the moonlight of our window. We took lilies to the
mantel, and set stalks of bloom on the table, with their trumpets
turned within upon the room. And when the lower lights had been
extinguished and Nichola had bidden us her grumbling good-night, we
opened the door of that upper room where the moon was silvering the
lilies; and we stood still, smitten with a common surprise.
“Pelleas,” I said, uncertainly, “O, Pelleas. I thought--”
“So did I,” said Pelleas, with a deep breath.
We bent above the lilies that looked so sweet-scented and yet had been
barren of fragrance because, we had told ourselves, they seemed flowers
of symbol without mission or message beyond the symbol, without hue
or passion, or, so to say, experience. (“Perhaps if one were to make
some one happy with them or to put them in a bride’s bouquet they would
no longer be scentless,” Pelleas had quaintly said.) And now we were
certain, as we stood hushed beside them, that our Easter lilies were
giving out a faint, delicious fragrance.
I looked up at Pelleas almost fearfully in the flood of Spring
moonlight. The radiance was full on his white hair and tranquil face,
and he met my eyes with the knowledge that we were suddenly become the
custodians of an exquisite secret. The words of the young servant of
God came to me understandingly.
“‘And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,’” I
said over. “O, Pelleas,” I added, tremulously, “do you think....”
Pelleas lifted his face and I thought that it shone in the dimness.
“Ah, well,” he answered, “we must believe all the beautiful things we
can.”