The next day was Sunday, and I was on duty at an early hour, prepared
to walk with Bessie to church. My darling was peculiar among women in
this: her church-going dress was sober-suited; like a little gray nun,
almost, she came down to me that morning. Her dress, of some soft gray
stuff, fell around her in the simplest folds, a knot of brown ribbon
at her throat, and in her hat a gray gull's wing.
I had praised the Italian women for the simplicity of their
church-attire: their black dresses and lace veils make a picturesque
contrast with the gorgeous ceremonials of the high altar. But there
was something in this quiet toilet, so fresh and simple and girl-like,
that struck me as the one touch of grace that the American woman can
give to the best even of foreign taste. Not the dramatic abnegation
indicated by the black dress, but the quiet harmony of a life atune.
Mrs. Sloman was ready even before Bessie came down. She was a
great invalid, although her prim and rigid countenance forbore any
expression save of severity. She had no pathos about her, not a touch.
Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been--and Bessie dimly hinted
that they were severe to agony at times--they were resolutely shut
within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early morning,
her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive cheeks, she
looked like a lady abbess--as cold, as unyielding and as hard.
There was small sympathy between the aunt and niece, but a great deal
of painstaking duty on the one side, and on the other the habit of
affection which young girls have for the faces they have always known.
Mrs. Sloman had been at pains to tell me, when my frequent visits to
her cottage made it necessary that I should in some fashion explain to
her as to what I wanted there, that her niece, Bessie Stewart, was in
nowise dependent on her, not even for a home. "This cottage we rent
in common. It was her father's desire that her property should
not accumulate, and that she should have nothing at my hands but
companionship, and"--with a set and sickly smile--"advice when it was
called for. We are partners in our expenses, and the arrangement can
be broken up at any moment."
Was this all? No word of love or praise for the fair young thing that
had brightened all her household in these two years that Bessie had
been fatherless?
I believe there was love and appreciation, but it was not Mrs.
Sloman's method to be demonstrative or expansive. She approved of the
engagement, and in her grim way had opened an immediate battery of
household ledgers and ways and means. Some idea, too, of making me
feel easy about taking Bessie away from her, I think, inclined her to
this business-like manner. I tried to show her, by my own manner, that
I understood her without words, and I think she was very grateful to
be spared the expression of feeling. Poor soul! repression had become
such a necessity to her!
So we talked on gravely of the weather, and of the celebrated Doctor
McQ----, who was expected to give us an argumentative sermon that
morning, until _my_ argument came floating in at the door like a calm
little bit of thistledown, to which our previous conversation had been
as the thistle's self.
The plain little church was gay that morning. Carriage after carriage
drove up with much prancing and champing, and group after group of
city folk came rustling along the aisles. It was a bit of Fifth Avenue
let into Lenox calm. The World and the Flesh were there, at least.
In the hush of expectancy that preceded the minister's arrival there
was much waving of scented fans, while the well-bred city glances took
in everything without seeming to see. I felt that Bessie and I
were being mentally discussed and ticketed. And as it was our first
appearance at church since--well, _since_--perhaps there was just a
little consciousness of our relations that made Bessie seem to retire
absolutely within herself, and be no more a part of the silken crowd
than was the grave, plain man who rose up in the pulpit.
I hope the sermon was satisfactory. I am sure it was convincing to a
brown-handed farmer who sat beside us, and who could with difficulty
restrain his applauding comment. But I was lost in a dream of a near
heaven, and could not follow the spoken word. It was just a quiet
little opportunity to contemplate my darling, to tell over her
sweetness and her charm, and to say over and again, like a blundering
school-boy, "It's all mine! mine!"
The congregation might have been dismissed for aught I knew, and
left me sitting there with her beside me. But I was startled into the
proprieties as we stood up to sing the concluding hymn. I was standing
stock-still beside her, not listening to the words at all, but with
a pleasant sense of everything being very comfortable, and an
old-fashioned swell of harmony on the air, when suddenly the book
dropped from Bessie's hand and fell heavily to the floor. I should
have said she flung it down had it been on any other occasion, so
rapid and vehement was the action.
I stooped to pick it up, when with a decided gesture she stopped me.
I looked at her surprised. Her face was flushed, indignant, I thought,
and instantly my conscience was on the rack. What had I done, for my
lady was evidently angry?
Glancing down once more toward the book, I saw that she had set her
foot upon it, and indeed her whole attitude was one of excitement,
defiance. Why did she look so hot and scornful? I was disturbed and
anxious: what was there in the book or in me to anger her?
As quickly as possible I drew her away from the bustling crowd when
the service was concluded. Fortunately, there was a side-door through
which we could pass out into the quiet churchyard, and we vanished
through it, leaving Mrs. Sloman far behind. Over into the Lebanon
road was but a step, and the little porch was waiting with its cool
honeysuckle shade. But Bessie did not stop at the gate: she was in no
mood for home. And yet she would not answer my outpouring questions as
to whether she was ill, or what _was_ the matter.
"I'll tell you in a minute. Come, hurry!" she said, hastening along up
the hill through all the dust and heat.
At last we reached that rustic bit of ruin known popularly as the
"Shed." It was a hard bit of climbing, but I rejoiced that Bessie, so
flushed and excited at the start, grew calmer as we went; and when,
the summit reached, she sat down to rest on a broken board, her color
was natural and she seemed to breathe freely again.
"Are they all hypocrites, do you think, Charlie?" she said suddenly,
looking up into my face.
"They? who? Bessie, what have I done to make you angry?"
"You? Nothing, dear goose! I am angry at myself and at everybody else.
Did it flash upon you, Charlie, what we were singing?"
Then she quoted the lines, which I will not repeat here, but they
expressed, as the sole aspiration of the singer, a desire to pass
eternity in singing hymns of joy and praise--an impatience for the
time to come, a disregard of earth, a turning away from temporal
things, and again the desire for an eternity of sacred song.
"Suppose I confess to you," said I, astonished at her earnestness,
"that I did not at all know what I was singing?"
"That's just it! just what makes it so dreadful! _Nobody_ was thinking
about it--nobody! Nobody there wanted to give up earth and go straight
to heaven and sing. I looked round at all the people, with their new
bonnets, and the diamonds, and the footmen in the pews up stairs, and
I thought, What lies they are all saying! Nobody wants to go to heaven
at all until they are a hundred years old, and too deaf and blind and
tired out to do anything on earth. My heaven is here and now in my own
happiness, and so is yours, Charlie; and I felt so convicted of being
a story-teller that I couldn't hold the book in my hand."
"Well, then," said I, "shall we have one set of hymns for happy
people, and another for poor, tired-out folks like that little
dressmaker that leaned against the wall?" For Bessie herself had
called my attention to the pale little body who had come to the church
door at the same moment with us.
"No, not two sets. Do you suppose that she, either, wants to _sing_ on
for ever? And all those girls! Sorry enough they would be to have to
die, and leave their dancing and flirtations and the establishments
they hope to have! It wouldn't be much comfort to them to promise them
they should _sing_. Charlie, I want a hymn that shall give thanks that
I am alive, that I have _you_."
"Could the dressmaker sing that?"
"No;" and Bessie's eyes sought the shining blue sky with a wistful,
beseeching tenderness. "Oh, it's all wrong, Charlie dear. She ought to
tell us in a chant how tired and hopeless she is for this world; and
we ought to sing to her something that would cheer her, help her, even
in this world. Why must she wait for all her brightness till she dies?
So perfectly heartless to stand up along side of her and sing _that_!"
"Well," I said, "you needn't wait till next Sunday to bring her your
words of cheer."
In a minute my darling was crying on my shoulder. I could understand
the outburst, and was glad of it.
All athrill with new emotions, new purposes, an eternity of love,
she had come to church to be reminded that earth was naught, that the
trials and tempests here would come to an end some day, and after, to
the patiently victorious, would come the hymns of praise. _Earth_
was very full that morning to her and me; _earth_ was a place for
worshipful harmonies; and yet the strong contrast with the poor
patient sufferer who had passed into church with us was too much for
Bessie: she craved an expression that should comprehend alike her
sorrow and our abundant joy.
The tempest of tears passed by, and we had bright skies again. Poor
Mrs. Sloman's dinner waited long that day; and it was with a guilty
sense that she was waiting too that we went down the hill at a
quickened pace when the church clock, sounding up the hillside, came
like a chiding voice.
And a double sense of guiltiness was creeping over me. I must return
to New York to-morrow, and I had not told Bessie yet of the longer
journey I must make so soon. I put it by again and again in the short
flying hours of that afternoon; and it was not until dusk had fallen
in the little porch, as we sat there after tea, and I had watched the
light from Mrs. Sloman's chamber shine down upon the honeysuckles and
then go out, that I took my resolution.
"Bessie," I said, leaning over her and taking her face in both my
hands, "I have something to tell you."