There were no Mayflowers in June; but now the Old Lady’s garden was
full of blossoms and every morning Sylvia found a bouquet of them by the
beech--the perfumed ivory of white narcissus, the flame of tulips, the
fairy branches of bleeding-heart, the pink-and-snow of little,
thorny, single, sweetbreathed early roses. The Old Lady had no fear of
discovery, for the flowers that grew in her garden grew in every other
Spencervale garden as well, including the Stewart garden. Chris Stewart,
when he was teased about the music teacher, merely smiled and held
his peace. Chris knew perfectly well who was the real giver of those
flowers. He had made it his business to find out when the Mayflower
gossip started. But since it was evident Old Lady Lloyd did not wish it
to be known, Chris told no one. Chris had always liked Old Lady Lloyd
ever since the day, ten years before, when she had found him crying in
the woods with a cut foot and had taken him into her house, and bathed
and bound the wound, and given him ten cents to buy candy at the store.
The Old Lady went without supper that night because of it, but Chris
never knew that.
The Old Lady thought it a most beautiful June. She no longer hated the
new days; on the contrary, she welcomed them.
“Every day is an uncommon day now,” she said jubilantly to herself--for
did not almost every day bring her a glimpse of Sylvia? Even on rainy
days the Old Lady gallantly braved rheumatism to hide behind her clump
of dripping spruces and watch Sylvia pass. The only days she could not
see her were Sundays; and no Sundays had ever seemed so long to Old Lady
Lloyd as those June Sundays did.
One day the egg pedlar had news for her.
“The music teacher is going to sing a solo for a collection piece
to-morrow,” he told her.
The Old Lady’s black eyes flashed with interest.
“I didn’t know Miss Gray was a member of the choir,” she said.
“Jined two Sundays ago. I tell you, our music is something worth
listening to now. The church’ll be packed to-morrow, I reckon--her
name’s gone all over the country for singing. You ought to come and hear
it, Miss Lloyd.”
The pedlar said this out of bravado, merely to show he wasn’t scared of
the Old Lady, for all her grand airs. The Old Lady made no answer, and
he thought he had offended her. He went away, wishing he hadn’t said it.
Had he but known it, the Old Lady had forgotten the existence of all and
any egg pedlars. He had blotted himself and his insignificance out of
her consciousness by his last sentence. All her thoughts, feelings, and
wishes were submerged in a very whirlpool of desire to hear Sylvia sing
that solo. She went into the house in a tumult and tried to conquer that
desire. She could not do it, even thought she summoned all her pride to
her aid. Pride said:
“You will have to go to church to hear her. You haven’t fit clothes to
go to church in. Think what a figure you will make before them all.”
But, for the first time, a more insistent voice than pride spoke to her
soul--and, for the first time, the Old Lady listened to it. It was too
true that she had never gone to church since the day on which she had
to begin wearing her mother’s silk dresses. The Old Lady herself thought
that this was very wicked; and she tried to atone by keeping Sunday very
strictly, and always having a little service of her own, morning and
evening. She sang three hymns in her cracked voice, prayed aloud, and
read a sermon. But she could not bring herself to go to church in her
out-of-date clothes--she, who had once set the fashions in Spencervale,
and the longer she stayed away, the more impossible it seemed that she
should ever again go. Now the impossible had become, not only possible,
but insistent. She must go to church and hear Sylvia sing, no matter how
ridiculous she appeared, no matter how people talked and laughed at her.
Spencervale congregation had a mild sensation the next afternoon. Just
before the opening of service Old Lady Lloyd walked up the aisle and sat
down in the long-unoccupied Lloyd pew, in front of the pulpit.
The Old Lady’s very soul was writhing within her. She recalled the
reflection she had seen in her mirror before she left--the old black
silk in the mode of thirty years agone and the queer little bonnet of
shirred black satin. She thought how absurd she must look in the eyes of
her world.
As a matter of fact, she did not look in the least absurd. Some women
might have; but the Old Lady’s stately distinction of carriage and
figure was so subtly commanding that it did away with the consideration
of garmenting altogether.
The Old Lady did not know this. But she did know that Mrs. Kimball,
the storekeeper’s wife, presently rustled into the next pew in the very
latest fashion of fabric and mode; she and Mrs. Kimball were the same
age, and there had been a time when the latter had been content
to imitate Margaret Lloyd’s costumes at a humble distance. But the
storekeeper had proposed, and things were changed now; and there sat
poor Old Lady Lloyd, feeling the change bitterly, and half wishing she
had not come to church at all.
Then all at once the Angel of Love touched these foolish thoughts, born
of vanity and morbid pride, and they melted away as if they had never
been. Sylvia Gray had come into the choir, and was sitting just where
the afternoon sunshine fell over her beautiful hair like a halo. The Old
Lady looked at her in a rapture of satisfied longing and thenceforth the
service was blessed to her, as anything is blessed which comes through
the medium of unselfish love, whether human or divine. Nay, are they not
one and the same, differing in degree only, not in kind?
The Old Lady had never had such a good, satisfying look at Sylvia
before. All her former glimpses had been stolen and fleeting. Now
she sat and gazed upon her to her hungry heart’s content, lingering
delightedly over every little charm and loveliness--the way Sylvia’s
shining hair rippled back from her forehead, the sweet little trick she
had of dropping quickly her long-lashed eyelids when she encountered
too bold or curious a glance, and the slender, beautifully modelled
hands--so like Leslie Gray’s hands--that held her hymn book. She was
dressed very plainly in a black skirt and a white shirtwaist; but none
of the other girls in the choir, with all their fine feathers, could
hold a candle to her--as the egg pedlar said to his wife, going home
from church.
The Old Lady listened to the opening hymns with keen pleasure. Sylvia’s
voice thrilled through and dominated them all. But when the ushers got
up to take the collection, an undercurrent of subdued excitement flowed
over the congregation. Sylvia rose and came forward to Janet Moore’s
side at the organ. The next moment her beautiful voice soared through
the building like the very soul of melody--true, clear, powerful, sweet.
Nobody in Spencervale had ever listened to such a voice, except Old
Lady Lloyd herself, who, in her youth, had heard enough good singing to
enable her to be a tolerable judge of it. She realized instantly that
this girl of her heart had a great gift--a gift that would some day
bring her fame and fortune, if it could be duly trained and developed.
“Oh, I’m so glad I came to church,” thought Old Lady Lloyd.
When the solo was ended, the Old Lady’s conscience compelled her to drag
her eyes and thoughts from Sylvia, and fasten them on the minister,
who had been flattering himself all through the opening portion of the
service that Old Lady Lloyd had come to church on his account. He was
newly settled, having been in charge of the Spencervale congregation
only a few months; he was a clever little fellow and he honestly thought
it was the fame of his preaching that had brought Old Lady Lloyd out to
church.
When the service was over all the Old Lady’s neighbours came to speak
to her, with kindly smile and handshake. They thought they ought to
encourage her, now that she had made a start in the right direction; the
Old Lady liked their cordiality, and liked it none the less because she
detected in it the same unconscious respect and deference she had been
wont to receive in the old days--a respect and deference which her
personality compelled from all who approached her. The Old Lady was
surprised to find that she could command it still, in defiance of
unfashionable bonnet and ancient attire.
Janet Moore and Sylvia Gray walked home from church together. “Did you
see Old Lady Lloyd out to-day?” asked Janet. “I was amazed when she
walked in. She has never been to church in my recollection. What a
quaint old figure she is! She’s very rich, you know, but she wears her
mother’s old clothes and never gets a new thing. Some people think
she is mean; but,” concluded Janet charitably, “I believe it is simply
eccentricity.”
“I felt that was Miss Lloyd as soon as I saw her, although I had never
seen her before,” said Sylvia dreamily. “I have been wishing to see
her--for a certain reason. She has a very striking face. I should like
to meet her--to know her.”
“I don’t think it’s likely you ever will,” said Janet carelessly. “She
doesn’t like young people and she never goes anywhere. I don’t think I’d
like to know her. I’d be afraid of her--she has such stately ways and
such strange, piercing eyes.”
“_I_ shouldn’t be afraid of her,” said Sylvia to herself, as she turned
into the Spencer lane. “But I don’t expect I’ll ever become acquainted
with her. If she knew who I am I suppose she would dislike me. I suppose
she never suspects that I am Leslie Gray’s daughter.”
The minister, thinking it well to strike while the iron was hot, went up
to call on Old Lady Lloyd the very next afternoon. He went in fear and
trembling, for he had heard things about Old Lady Lloyd; but she made
herself so agreeable in her high-bred fashion that he was delighted,
and told his wife when he went home that Spencervale people didn’t
understand Miss Lloyd. This was perfectly true; but it is by no means
certain that the minister understood her either.
He made only one mistake in tact, but, as the Old Lady did not snub him
for it, he never knew he made it. When he was leaving he said, “I hope
we shall see you at church next Sunday, Miss Lloyd.”
“Indeed, you will,” said the Old Lady emphatically.