A NEW SERVICE FOR THE SABBATH.
"AT what hour do you have to start for church?"
This was the question which Louise asked of her husband on Saturday
evening, as she moved about their room making preparations for the next
morning's toilet.
"Well," he said, "it is three miles, you know. We make an effort to get
started by about half-past nine, though sometimes we are late. It makes
hurrying work on Sunday morning, Louise. I don't know how you will like
that."
"I shouldn't think there would be room in one carriage for all the
family. Is there?"
"Room for all who go," Lewis said gravely.
"All who go! why, they all go to church, don't they?"
"Why, no; in fact, they never all go at one time; they cannot leave the
house, you know."
Louise's bewildered look proved that she did not know.
"Why not?" she asked, with wonderment in tone and eyes. "What will
happen to the house?"
Despite a desire not to do so, her husband was obliged to laugh.
"Well," he said hesitatingly, "you know they never leave a farmhouse
alone and go to church."
"I didn't know it, I am sure. Why don't they?"
"I declare I don't know," and he laughed again. "Possibly it is a
notion; there are ugly-looking fellows prowling around sometimes,
and—well, it's the custom, anyhow."
"Don't they ever close the house and all go away?"
Then was Lewis Morgan nonplussed. Distinct memories rose before his
eyes of Good Fridays and Christmas days, and gala days of several
sorts, when the house had been closed and darkened, and left to itself
from early morning late into the afternoon. How was he to explain why
a thing that was feasible for holidays became impracticable on the
Sabbath?
"I'm not sure but that is one of the things that 'no f-f-fellow can
f-f-find out,'" he said, with a burst of laughter. "Do you know 'Lord
Dundreary'?" Then: "Seriously, Louise, our family has fallen into
the custom that obtains of not closing a farmhouse save on special
occasions. I suspect the custom sometimes grows out of indifference for
church. You remember that none of the family have a real love for the
service. It is a source of sorrow to me, as you may suppose. I hope for
better things."
Then the talk drifted away into other channels; but in Louise's heart
there lingered a minor tone of music over the thought that the next day
would be the Sabbath. Shut away, for the first time in her life, from
the prayer-meeting, from the hour of family worship, from constant and
pleasant interchange of thought on religious themes, she felt a hunger
for it all such as she had never realized before, and closed her eyes
that night with this refrain in her heart, "To-morrow I shall go to
church."
The first conscious sound the next morning was the dripping of the
rain-drops from the eaves.
"Oh dear!" Lewis said, dismay in his voice. "We are going to have a
rainy day!"
A careful, critical look at the prospect from the eastern window
confirmed this opinion, and he repeated it with a gloomy face, adding,—
"I don't know when the weather has succeeded in disappointing me so
much before."
"Never mind," Louise said cheerily. "It will not make much difference.
I don't mind the rain. I have a rainy day suit, that mamma used to call
my coat of mail. It is impervious to all sorts of weather; and, with
your rubber coat, and a good-sized umbrella, we shall do almost as well
as though the sun shone."
But her husband's face did not brighten.
"It is not personal inconvenience that I fear for you," he said
gravely, "but disappointment. The truth is, Louise, I am afraid we
can't go to church. This looks like a persistent storm, and my father
has such a love for his horses, and such a dread of their exposure
to these winter storms, that he never thinks of getting them out in
the rain unless it is absolutely necessary; and you know he doesn't
consider church-going an absolutely necessary thing. Could you bear to
be disappointed, and stay at home with me all day?"
"Why, yes," said Louise slowly, trying to smile over those two words,
"with me." "That is, if it is right. But, Lewis, it seems so strange a
thing to do, to stay at home from church all day on account of a little
rain that would hardly keep us from a shopping excursion."
"I know, looking at it from your standpoint it must seem very strange;
but all the education of my home has been so different that I do not
suppose it even seems as strange to me as to you. Still I by no means
approve; and, as soon as I can make arrangements for a horse of my own,
we will not be tried in this way. Indeed, Louise, I can manage it now.
Of course, if I insist on it, my father will yield the point, but he
will offer very serious objection. What do you think? Would it be right
to press the question against his will?"
"Certainly not," his wife said hastily. "At least," she added, with
a bright smile, "I don't suppose the command to obey one's parents
is exactly annulled by the marriage service. Anyhow, the 'honour thy
father and thy mother' never is."
And she put aside her church toilet, and made her preparations to do
that which was to her an unprecedented thing—stay at home from church
in full health and strength.
The question once settled that, under the circumstances, it was the
proper thing to do, it was by no means a disagreeable way of spending
Sabbath morning. Her husband had been so constantly occupied since
their home-coming in carrying out his father's plans for improvements
on the farm, that Louise had seen but little of him; and when, after
breakfast, they returned to their own room, and he, in dressing-gown
and slippers, replenished the crackling wood fire, and opened the
entire front of the old-fashioned stove, letting the glow from it
brighten the room, Louise admitted that the prospect was most inviting.
She drew in her own little rocker, which had travelled with her
from her room at home, and settled beside him, book in hand, for a
delightful two hours of social communion, such as they had not enjoyed
for weeks before.
The reading and the talking that went on in that room, on that rainy
Sabbath morning, were looked back to afterward as pleasant hours to be
remembered. Occasionally the fact that it was Sunday, and she not at
church, and a picture of the dear church at home, and the dear faces
in the family pew, and the seat left vacant in the Sunday school room,
would shadow Louise's face for an instant; but it brightened again. She
had chosen her lot, guided, as she believed, by the hand of her Lord.
It was not for a face realizing this to be in shadow.
It was not until the Sunday dinner had been eaten, and they were back
again, those two, in the brightness of their enjoyed solitude, that
the grave, preoccupied look on Louise's face told that her thoughts
were busy with something outside of their surroundings—something that
troubled her.
"Lewis, what shall we do this afternoon?" she asked him, interrupting a
sentence in which he was declaring that a rainy Sunday was, after all,
a blessing.
"Do!" he repeated. "Why, we will have a delightful Sunday afternoon
talk, and a little reading, and a good deal of—well, I don't know just
what name to give it; heart-rest, perhaps, would be a good one. Aren't
you enjoying the day, dear?"
She turned toward him a smiling face.
"Yes, with a thoroughly selfish enjoyment, I am afraid. I was thinking
of the family downstairs; what can we do to help them, Lewis?"
"Oh!" said her husband, and his face clouded; he seemed to have no
other suggestion to offer.
"They did not look as though they were enjoying the day. I think
it must be dreary for Dorothy and John. I wish we could contribute
something to make the time seem less lonely to them. Suppose we go
down, Lewis, and try what we can do."
Her husband looked as though that was the thing, of all others, which
he had the least desire to do.
"My dear Louise," he began slowly, then stopped, and, finding that she
waited, began again. "The trouble is, wife, I don't know how we can
help any of them. They are not good at talking, and the sort of talk
in which John and Dorothy indulge wouldn't strike you as being suited
to the Sabbath day; in fact, I don't believe you would join in it.
They are used to being at home on the Sabbath; we are always home from
church by this time, and the afternoon is the same to them it always
is. I don't believe we can do anything, dear."
Mrs. Morgan did not look in the least convinced.
"The afternoon ought not to be the same to them it always has been,
should it, Lewis? We have come home, a new element in the family. We
ought, surely, to have some influence. Can't we find something to say
that will do for the Sabbath? What have you talked about with the
family before I came? How did you spend Sunday afternoons?"
"Up here, in my room, when it wasn't too cold; and sometimes, when it
was, I went to bed, and did my reading and thinking there. I rarely
go downstairs on Sunday until milking time. You see, Louise, I really
don't know my own family very well. The early age at which I left home,
being only back for a few weeks at a time during vacations; then my
exile, with Uncle John, to Australia—all this has contributed to making
me a sort of stranger among them. I doubt whether John and Dorothy feel
much better acquainted with me than they do with you. They were both
little things when I went away; and, during this last year, I hardly
know what is the matter. Perhaps I haven't gone about it in the right
way, but I haven't seemed to make any advances in their direction."
"To be very frank with you, Louise, John is always sullen toward me;
and Dorothy acts as though she were half afraid of me, and her foolish
jumpings and blushings seem so out of place, when one remembers that
she is my own sister, that, I will confess to you, I sometimes feel
utterly out of patience with her. As for my mother and father, while
I honour them as true, unselfish, faithful parents, there are many
subjects upon which we do not think alike; and I am often at a loss to
know how to get along without hurting their feelings. The result is,
that I shirk the social a good deal, and devote myself to myself, or
did. Now that I have you to devote myself to, I am willing to be as
social as you please."
The sentence, begun in seriousness, he had purposely allowed to assume
a lighter tone; but Louise held with sweet gravity to her former topic.
"Even Christ pleased not himself," she quoted gently. Then added, "You
may imagine how pleasant it is to me to sit here with you for a whole
quiet day. Nevertheless, Lewis, let us go downstairs to the family, and
see if we cannot, as a family, honour the day together."
She had risen as she spoke, and drawn her little rocker away from
the stove, preparatory to leaving the room. Very slowly her husband
followed her example, reluctance on every line of his face.
"I will go down with you, if you say so; but, honestly, I never dreaded
to do anything more in my life! I can imagine that it seems a very
strange thing to you, but I really and truly don't in the least know
what to say when we got down there—I mean, that will be in keeping with
our ideas of the Sabbath, and will help anybody."
"Neither do I," said Louise quietly. "Since we both feel our unfitness,
let us kneel down before we go, and ask for the Spirit's guidance.
Don't you know he promises: 'Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee
saying, This is the way, walk ye in it'? I cannot help thinking that he
points us down to that family room; why should not we ask him to fill
our mouths?"
Without another word, and with a strange sense of solemnity about him,
the young husband turned and dropped upon his knees beside his wife.
A few minutes thereafter they of the kitchen were startled by the
unexpected entrance of the young couple into their midst. Almost any
movement would have startled the quiet that reigned therein.
The kitchen, on a dull day, with its scarcity of windows, was a dark
and dingy spot, the clean and shining stove being the only speck of
brightness. The family group was complete; yet Louise, as she glanced
around her, taking in their occupations, or want of occupations,
could not forbear feeling the sense of dulness which their positions
suggested. Farmer Morgan, with his steel-bowed spectacles mounted on
his forehead, winked and blinked over the columns of the weekly paper.
Mrs. Morgan sat bolt upright in her favourite straight-backed chair,
and held in her hands an old-fashioned family Bible, in which Nellie
had dutifully been spelling out the words until her restlessness had
gotten the better of her mother's patience, and she had been sent to
the straight-backed chair in the corner, to sit "until she could learn
to stand still, and not twist around on one foot, and hop up and down
when she was reading!" How long will poor Nellie have to "sit" before
she learns that lesson?
Dorothy, without the hopping, was not one whit less restless, and
lounged from one chair to another in an exasperatingly aimless way,
calling forth from her mother, several times, a sharp—
"Dorothy, why can't you sit still when you get a chance? If you
worked as hard as I do all the week, you would be glad enough of a
day of rest." But poor Dorothy was not glad; she hated the stillness
and inaction of the Sabbath; she breathed a sigh of relief when the
solemn-voiced clock clanged out another hour, and looked forward with a
sort of satisfaction even to the bustle of the coming wash-day morning.
John was there, as silent and immovable as a statue, sitting in his
favourite corner, behind the stove; in his favourite attitude, boots
raised high to the stove-hearth; slouched hat on, drawn partly over his
eyes; hands in his pockets, and a deeper shade of sullenness on his
face. So it seemed to Louise. "Poor fellow!" she said, in compassionate
thought. "It is a surprise to me that he doesn't do something awfully
wicked. He will do it, too; I can see it in his face; unless—"
But she didn't finish her thought, even to herself. These various
persons glanced up on the entrance of the two, and looked their
surprise. Then Farmer Morgan, seeing that they proposed to take seats,
moved his chair a little and motioned Lewis nearer the stove, with the
words—
"A nasty day; fire feels good."
"Yet it hasn't rained much," Lewis said, watching Louise, and finding
that she went over to the unoccupied chair nearest Nellie, he took the
proffered seat.
"Rained enough to make mean going for to-morrow; and we've got to go
to town in the morning, rain or shine. I never did see the beat of
this winter for rain and mud; I don't believe it will freeze up before
Christmas."
"You can't get started very early for town," remarked Mrs. Morgan.
"There was so much to do yesterday that I didn't get around to fixing
the butter, and it will take quite a little spell in the morning; and
Dorothy didn't count over the eggs, and pack 'em, either. Dorothy's
fingers were all thumbs, by the way she worked yesterday; we didn't get
near as much done as common."
"She and John were about a match, I guess," Farmer Morgan said,
glancing at the sullen-browed young man behind the stove. "Yesterday
was his unlucky day. About everything you touched broke, didn't it,
John?"
"That's nothing new."
John growled out this contribution to the conversation between lips
that seemed firmly closed. Lewis glanced toward his wife. How would she
think they were getting on? What would she think of butter, and eggs,
and accidents as topics for Sabbath conversation?
But Louise had put an arm around little Nellie, and was holding a
whispered conversation with her, and at this moment broke into the talk.
"Mother, may this little maiden come and sit on my lap, if she will be
very good and quiet? My arms ache for the little girlie who used to
climb into them at about this hour on Sunday."