A DRINKING-SONG AT A PRAYER-MEETING
Having failed in his attempt to induce Annie to remain at home, Gregory
resolved that the prayer-meeting should not be one of quiet devotion.
Mr. Walton made him, as an invalid, take the back seat with Annie,
while he sat with the driver, and Gregory, after a faint show of
resistance, gladly complied.
"It's chilly. Won't you give me half of your shawl?" he said to her.
"You may have it all," she replied, about to take it off.
"No, I'll freeze first. Do the brethren and sisters sit together?"
"No," she answered, laughing, "we have got in the queer way of dividing
the room between us, and the few men who attend sit on one side and we
on the other."
"Oh, it's almost a female prayer-meeting then. Do the sisters pray?"
"Mr. Gregory, you are not a stranger here that you need pretend to such
ignorance. I think the meeting is conducted very much as when you were
a boy."
"With this most interesting difference, that you will be there and will
sing, I hope. Miss Walton, where did you learn to sing?"
"Mainly at home."
"I should think so. Your voice is as unlike that of a public singer as
you are unlike the singer herself."
"It must seem very tame to you."
"It seems very different. We have an artificial-flower department in
our store. There is no lack of color and form there, I assure you, but
after all I would prefer your rose garden in June."
"But you would probably prefer your artificial-flower department the
rest of the year," said Annie, laughing.
"Why so?"
"Our roses are annuals and are only prosaic briers after their bloom."
"Imagine them hybrid perpetuals and monthlies and you have my meaning.
But your resemblance to a rose extends even to its thorns. Your words
are a little sharp sometimes."
"In the thorns the resemblance begins and ends, Mr. Gregory. I assure
you I am a veritable Scotch brier. But here we are at our destination.
I wonder if you will see many old, remembered faces."
"I shall be content in seeing yours," he replied in a low tone,
pressing her hand as he assisted her to alight.
If he could have seen the expression of her face in the darkness it
would have satisfied him that she did not receive that style of
compliment like many of the belles of his acquaintance, who would take
the small change of flattery with the smiling complacency of a public
door-keeper.
They were late. The good old pastor was absent, and one of the brethren
was reading a chapter in the Bible. Gregory took a seat where he could
see Annie plainly, and she sat with her side face toward him.
He watched her keenly, in order to see if she showed any consciousness
of his presence. The only evidence in his favor was a slight flush and
a firmness about the lips, as if her will was asserting itself. But
soon her face had the peaceful and serious expression becoming the
place and hour, and he saw that she had no thoughts for him whatever.
He was determined to distract her attention, and by restlessness, by
looking fixedly at her, sought her eye, but only secured the notice of
some young girls who thought him "badly smitten with Miss Walton."
The long chapter having been read, a hymn was given out. The gentleman
who usually led the music was also absent, and there was an ominous
pause, in which the good brother's eye wandered appealingly around the
room and at last rested hopefully on Annie. She did not fail him, but,
with heightened color and voice that trembled slightly at first,
"started the tune." It was a sweet, familiar air, and she soon had the
support of other voices. One after another they joined her in widely
varying degrees of melody, even as the example of a noble life will
gradually secure a number of more or less successful imitators.
Gregory had seen the appeal to her with an amused, half-comical look,
but her sincere and ready performance of the duty that had unexpectedly
revealed itself rapidly changed the expression of his face to one of
respect and admiration. Distinct, and yet blending with the others, her
voice seemed both to key up and hide the little roughnesses and
discords of some who perhaps had more melody in their hearts than in
their tones.
Again a divine impulse, like a flower-laden breeze sweeping into a dark
and grated vault at Greenwood, stirred Gregory's evil nature.
"Let her teach you the harmony of noble, unselfish living. Follow her
in thought, feeling, and action, as those stammering, untuned tongues
do in melody, and the blight of evil will pass from your life. Seek not
to muddy and poison this clear little rill that is watering a bit of
God's world. Grant that her goodness is not real, established, and
thoroughly tested--that it is only a pretty surface picture. Seek not
to blur that picture."
But the evil heart is like Sodom. Good angel-thoughts may come to it,
but they are treated with violence and driven out. His habit of cynical
doubt soon returned, and his purpose to show Miss Walton that she was a
weak, vain woman after all became stronger than ever.
It seemed to have come to this, that his salvation depended on, not
what Miss Walton could say or do directly in his behalf, but upon her
maintenance of a character that even a sceptical world must acknowledge
as inspired by heaven, and this, too, against a tempter of unusual
skill and tact. She might sing with resistless pathos, and argue and
plead with Paul's logic and eloquence. His nature might be stirred for
a moment as a stagnant pool is agitated by the winds of heaven, and,
like the pool, he would soon settle back into his old apathy. But if
she could be made to show weakness, to stumble and fall, it would
confirm him in his belief that goodness, if it really existed, was
accidental; that those whose lives were apparently free from stain
deserved no credit, because untempted; and that those who fell should
be pitied rather than blamed, since they were unfortunate rather than
guilty. Anything that would quiet and satisfy his conscience in its
stern arraignment of his evil life would be welcome. The more he saw of
Miss Walton the more he felt that she would be a fair subject upon whom
to test his favorite theory. Therefore, by the time one of the brethren
present had finished his homely exhortation he was wholly bent upon
carrying out his plan.
But Miss Walton sat near, as innocently oblivious of this plot against
her as Eve of the serpent's guile before the tempter and temptation
came into fatal conjunction.
What thoughts for and against each other may dwell utterly hidden and
unknown in the hearts of those so near that their hands may touch!
Conspiracies to compass the death that is remediless may lurk just
behind eyes that smile upon us. Of course Gregory desired no such fatal
result to follow his little experiment. Few who for their own pleasure,
profit, or caprice tempt others wish the evil to work on to the bitter
end. They merely want a sufficient letting down of principle and virtue
for the accomplishment of their purpose, and then would prefer that the
downward tendency should cease or be reversed. The merchant who
requires dishonorable practices of his clerk wishes him to stop at a
point which, in the world's estimation, is safe. And those who, like
Gregory, would take the bloom from woman's purity and holiness in
thought and action, that they may enjoy a questionable flirtation,
would be horrified to see that woman drop into the foul gulf of vice.
With the blind egotism of selfishness, they wish merely to gratify
their present inclinations, ignoring the consequences. They are like
children who think it would be sport to see a little cataract falling
over a Holland dike. Therefore, when the tide is in they open a small
channel, but are soon aghast to find that the deep sea is overwhelming
the land.
Gregory, as is usual with his kind, thought only of his own desires.
When he had accomplished these Miss Walton must take care of herself.
When from seeming a sweet, pure woman she had, by a little temptation,
proved to be capable of becoming a vain flirt, he would go back to
business and dismiss her from his thoughts with the grim chuckle, "She
is like the rest of us."
And thus Annie was destined to meet her mother Eve's experience; and
with the energy and promptness of evil Gregory was keenly on the alert
for anything to further his purpose.
It would seem that the satanic ally in such schemes does not permit
opportunity to be wanting long. The leader of the meeting again
selected a hymn, but of a peculiar metre. He read only two lines, and
then looked expectantly toward Annie, who could not at the moment think
of a tune that would answer; and while with knit brows she was bending
over her book, to her unbounded surprise she heard the hymn started by
a clear, mellow tenor voice. Looking up she saw Gregory singing as
gravely as a deacon. She was sufficiently a musician to know that the
air did not belong to sacred music, though she had never heard it
before.
In his watchfulness he had noted her hesitation, and glancing at the
metre saw instantly that the measure of a drinking-song he knew well
would fit the words. This fell out better than he had hoped, and with
the thought, "I will jostle her out of her dignity now," he began
singing without any embarrassment, though every eye was upon him. He
had been out in the world long enough for that.
As Annie turned with a shocked and half-frightened expression toward
him his eyes met hers with a sudden gleam of drollery which was
irresistible, and he had the satisfaction of seeing her drop her head
to conceal a smile. But he noticed, a moment later, that her face
became grave with disapprobation.
Having sung a stanza he looked around with an injured air, as if
reproaching the others for not joining in with him.
"The tune is not exactly familiar to us," said the good man leading the
meeting, "but if the brother will continue singing we will soon catch
the air; or perhaps the brother or some one else (with a glance at
Annie) will start one better known."
Gregory deliberately turned over the leaves, and to the tune of Old
Hundred started a hymn commencing:
"Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb,
Take this new treasure to thy trust,
And give these sacred relics room
To slumber in the silent dust."
Annie had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and the transition from what
he had been singing to the funereal and most inappropriate words was
almost too much for her. To her impotent anger and self-disgust she
felt a hysterical desire to laugh, and only controlled herself by
keeping her head down and her lips firmly pressed together during the
remainder of the brief service.
Even others who did not know Gregory could not prevent a broad smile at
the incongruous hymn he had chosen, but they unitedly wailed it
through, for he persisted in singing it all in the most dirge-like
manner. They gave him credit for doing the best he could, and supposed
his unhappy choice resulted from haste and embarrassment. In the
spontaneity of social meetings people become accustomed to much that is
not harmonious.
Mr. Walton was puzzled. His guest was certainly appearing in an
unexpected role, and he feared that all was not right.
After the meeting the brethren gathered round Gregory and thanked him
for his assistance, and he shook hands with them and the elderly ladies
present with the manner of one who might have been a "pillar in the
temple." Many of them remembered his father and mother and supposed
their mantle had fallen on him.
An ancient "mother in Israel" thanked him that he had "started a tune
that they all could sing, instead of the new-fangled ones the young
people are always getting up nowadays. But," said she, "I wish you
could learn us that pretty one you first sang, for it took my fancy
amazingly. I think I must have heard it before somewhere."
Gregory gave Annie another of his suggestive glances, that sent her out
hastily into the darkness, and a moment later he joined her at the
carriage steps.