The Other Girls - Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney (free novels to read TXT) 📗

Drury Lane."


CHAPTER XIV.

MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL.

It was on the corner of Merle Street and Mavis Place. The Reverend Hilary Vireo, as I have told you, was the minister.

It might have been called, if anybody had thought of it, "The Chapel of the New Song." For it was the very gospel of hope and gladness that Hilary Vireo preached there, and had preached and lived for twenty years, making lives to sing that would have moaned.

"Haven't you a song in your heart, somewhere?" was his word once, to a man of hard life, who came to him in a trouble, and telling him of it, passed to a spiritual confidence, such as Vireo drew out of people without the asking. At the end of his story, the man had said that "he supposed it was as good as he ought to expect; he hadn't any business to look for better, and he must just bear it, for _this_ life. He hoped there _was_ something afterwards for them that could get to it, but he didn't know."

"Aren't you _glad_ of things, sometimes?" said Mr. Vireo. "Of a pleasant day, even,--or a strong, fresh feeling in the morning? Don't you touch the edge of the great gladness that is in the world, now and then, in spite of your own little single worries? Well, _that's_ what God means; and the worry is the interruption. He _never_ means that. There's a great song forever singing, and we're all parts and notes of it, if we will just let Him put us in tune. What we call trouble is only his key, that draws our heart-strings truer, and brings them up sweet and even to the heavenly pitch. Don't mind the strain; believe in the _note_, every time his finger touches and sounds it. If you are glad for one minute in the day, that is his minute; the minute He means, and works for."

The man was a tuner of pianofortes. He went away with that lesson in his heart, to come back to him repeatedly in his own work, day by day. He had been believing in the twists and stretches; he began from that moment to believe in the music touches, far apart though they might come. He lived from a different centre; the growth began to be according to the life.

"It's queer," he said once, long afterward, reminding Mr. Vireo of what he had spoken in the moment it was given through him, and then forgotten. "A man can put himself a'most where he pleases. Into a hurt finger or a toothache, till it is all one great pain with him; or outside of that, into something he cares for, or can do with his well hand, till he gets rid of it and forgets it. There's generally more comfort than ache, I do suppose, if we didn't live right in the middle of the ache. But you see, that's the great secret to find out. If ever we _do_ get it,--complete"--

"Ah, that's the resurrection and the life," said Mr. Vireo.

Among the crowd that waited about the open chapel doors, and through the porches, and upon the stair-ways, one clear, sunny, October morning, on which the congregation would not gather quietly to its pews, stood this man, and many another man, and woman, and little child, to whom a word from Hilary Vireo was a word right out of heaven.

They would all have a first sight of him to-day,--his first Sunday among them after the whole summer's absence in Europe. He might easily not get into his pulpit at all, but give his gift in crumbs, all the way along from the street curb-stones to the aisles in the church above,--they waylaid him so to snatch at it from hand, face, voice, as he should come in. It would not be altogether unlike Hilary Vireo, if seeing things this way, he stopped right there amongst them, to deal out heart-cheer and sympathy right and left, face to face, and hand to hand,--the Gospel appointed for that day.

"What a crowd there'll be in heaven about some people!" said a tall, good-looking man to Hilary Vireo, in an undertone, as he came up the sidewalk with him into the edge of these waiting groups.

"May be. There'll be some scattering, I fancy, that we don't look for. We shall find _all_ our centres there," returned Mr. Vireo, hastily, as his people closed about him and the hand-shaking began.

Christopher Kirkbright made his way to the stairs, as the passage on one side became cleared by the drifting of the parish over to the western door, by which the minister was entering. A little way up he found his sister, sitting with a young woman in the deep window ledge at the turn, whence they could look quietly down and watch the scene. Overhead, the heavy bell swung out slow, intermitted peals, that thrilled down through all the timbers of the building, and forth upon the crisp autumn air.

"My brother--Miss Ledwith," said Miss Euphrasia, introducing them.

Desire Ledwith looked up, The intensity that was in her gray eyes turned full into Christopher Kirkbright's own. It was like the sudden shifting of a lens through which sun-rays were pouring. She had been so absorbed with watching and thinking, that her face had grown keen and earnest without her knowing, as it had been always wont to do; only it was different from the old way in this,--that while the other had been eager, asking, unsatisfied, this was simply deep, intent; a searching outward, that was answered and fed simultaneously from within and behind; it was the _transmitted_ light by which the face of Moses shone, standing between the Lord and the people.

She was not beautiful now, any more than she had been as a very young girl, when we first knew her; in feature, that is, and with mere outward grace; but her earnestness had so shaped for itself, with its continual, unthwarted flow, a natural and harmonious outlet in brow and eyes; in every curve by which the face conforms itself to that which genuinely animates it, that hers was now a countenance truly radiant of life, hope, purpose. The small, thin, clear cut nose,--the lip corners dropped with untutored simplicity into a rest and decision that were better than sparkle and smile,--the coolness, the strength, that lay in the very tint and tone of her complexion,--these were all details of character that had asserted itself. It had changed utterly one thing; the old knitting and narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of the cheeks, making an artistic harmony with them.

It was not a face, so much as a living soul, that turned itself toward Miss Euphrasia's brother, as Miss Kirkbright spoke his name and Desire's.

For some reason, he found himself walking into the church beside them afterward, thinking oddly of the etymology of that word,--"introduced."

"Brought within; behind the barriers; made really known. Effie gave me a glimpse of that girl,--her _self_. I don't think I was ever so really introduced before."

He did not know at all who Miss Ledwith was; she might have been one of the chapel protegees; from Hanover or Neighbor Street, or where not; they all looked nice, in their Sunday dress; those who were helped to dress were made to look as nice as anybody.

Desire Ledwith had on a dark maroon-colored serge, made very simply; bordered, I believe, with just a little roll binding of velvet around the upper skirt. Any shop-girl might have worn that; any shop-girl would perhaps have been scarcely satisfied to wear the plain black hat, with just one curly tip of ostrich feather tucked in where the velvet band was folded together around it.

Desire sat with her class; it was her family, she said; her church-family, at any rate; she had chosen her scholars from those who had no parents to come with, and sit by; they were all glad of their home-place weekly, at her side.

Miss Kirkbright and her brother went into the minister's pew. Miss Kirkbright did not usually come to the service; the school, in which she taught, met in the afternoon; but this was Mr. Vireo's first Sunday, and his friend, her brother Christopher, had just come home with him across the Atlantic.

There was singing, in which nearly every voice joined; there was praying, in which one voice spoke as to a Presence felt close beside; and all the people felt at least that _he_ felt it, and that therefore it must be there. They believed in it through him, as we all believe in it through Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father. That they might some time come where he stood now, and know as he knew, many of them were simply, carefully, daily striving to "do the Will."

He spoke to them of "journeyings;" of how God was everywhere in the whole earth; of how Abraham had the Lord with him, as he travelled up through a land he knew not, as he dwelt in Padan Aram, as he crossed the desert and came down through the hill-country into Canaan. Of how the Lord met Jacob at Bethel, when he was on his way through strange places, to go and serve his uncle Laban; how he went with Joseph into Egypt, and afterwards led out the children of Israel through forty years of wandering, showing them signs, and comforting them all the way; how "He leadeth me" is still the believer's song, still the heart-meaning of every human life.

"Whether we go or stay, as to place, we all move on; from our Mondays to our Saturdays; from one experience to another; and before us and beside us, passes always and abides near that presence of _the Lord_. Do you know what 'the Lord' means? It is the bread-giver; the feeder; the provider of every little thing. That is the name of God when He comes close to humanity. In the beginning, _God_ created the heavens and the earth; but _the Lord_ spoke unto Adam; _the Lord_ appeared unto Abraham; _the Lord_ was the God of Israel.

"God is _our_ Lord; our daily leader; our bread-giver, from meal to meal, from mouthful to mouthful. The Angel of his Presence saves us continually. And in these latter days, the 'Lord' is 'Christ;' the human love of Him come down into our souls, to take away our sins,--to give us bread from heaven to eat; to fulfill in the inward kingdom every type and sign of the old leading; through need and toil, through strange places, through tedious waitings, through the long wilderness, and over the river into the Land that is beautiful and very far off."

The four walked away from the church together; they stopped on the corner of Borden Street. Here Desire and Mr. Vireo would leave them,--their way lying down the hill.

"I liked your doctrine of the Lord," said Miss Euphrasia to the minister. "That is true New Church interpretation, as I receive it."

"How can any one help seeing it? It shines so through the whole," said Desire.

"Leader and Giver; it is the one revelation of Scripture, from beginning to end," said Mr. Vireo. "'Come forth into the land that I shall show thee.' 'Follow Me, and I will give unto you everlasting life.' The same call in the Old Testament and in the New."

"'One Lord, one faith, one baptism,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia.