Sunlight Patch Part 40

"Do you know what the country is saying?" she asked quickly.

"What the country is saying?" he repeated after her.

"Yes, this country, all about us, everywhere! It's telling me something, and I just wondered if you could be getting the message, too."

He pretended to be listening.

"I can hear a brown thrasher warbling to me how much we love you! Is that what you mean?"

"I wish you would be serious," she said--being, in fact, very far from the wish. "The day is so lovely, so abundant with a nameless something which comes to so few days, that it's asking if you won't try not to spoil it with silly misrelations. Can't you hear it, now?"

"There's no doubt about my hearing it now," he gloomily admitted. "I suppose we should have brought Dale, after all!"

"Don't spoil it in another way," she laughed. "You're such a--I was about to say kid, but that's slangy, and I detest it. You're slangy--awfully, Brent--aren't you!"

In spite of himself his face relaxed into a grin. There was no resisting Jane's appeals, and if she wanted now to be quiet, or talk about anything under the sun, at this admirable day's request, he was, for the time being, willing. He told her this, and it is one of the anomalies of human infelicity that she felt a tinge of disappointment at his ready acquiescence.

"I've always loved this lane," she murmured, after not too long a pause.

"Isn't it the soul of peace?"

"Peace? How can you?" he looked down at her. "See the struggle!

Honeysuckle, trumpet-vine, poison-ivy, wild-grape, alder--and everything else which I can't name--crowding and tangling and choking out each other's lives! You call it peace?"

They had reached a crest of a hill and, down in front of them half a mile on, stood the chapel, so snugly placed that only its little cross could be seen above the tree-tops, summoning the indolent country-side to prayer. With her eyes resting on it, she answered:

"The approach to your devotions seems to have made you pessimistic."

"My devotions are here, at my side," he said in a low voice. "And my pessimism is caused by the true gla.s.s of my nature being held honestly before my eyes. It started cutting up this way today after you left us, and ever since I've not been able to spare myself. I don't know how to make you understand it--perhaps you don't want to understand it--but the two sides of this lane seem so peculiarly expressive of my life that I see no peace in them at all."

"The lane might not be so attractive without a medley of rioting things," she answered dreamily. "Yet, it could be improved by cutting out the poison-ivy!"

"If that were cut out of the lane I mean, there would be little left.

It seems to have taken possession of--of my lane!"

"Are there not gardeners," she smiled a wee bit tenderly up at him, "who know how it could be done?"

"But I have no gardener." The wistfulness in his voice checked her smile.

They were at the chapel now, and he drove beneath the grove of trees, helped her down, and then unchecked and tied the horse near a few others already there. She waited. Slowly they went up to the silent door, but on its threshold he touched her arm.

"May I find a gardener?" He was looking down with a strong appeal in his eyes.

"For your sake, do," she hurriedly whispered, and went in.

They were early, and the chapel seemed to be dozing in a cool gloom which was softly set in motion as she glided, like a graceful shadow, up the aisle. He followed with more st.u.r.dy strides. So very quiet and vault-like was the place, that each worshipper there before them could be heard turning to see who came; and when he finally stretched back in the pew of her selection, the creaking of its heavy walnut joints let loose the echoes of a hundred years.

She had knelt, but he sat back watching her. The slowly westering sun, piercing the outside branches and filtering a gleam of rose through one of the gothic windows, touched her raised face that was in no need of color. And while she gazed upon the crucifix, he looked tenderly upon her who was typifying the most lovely purity he had to that time known.

A man entered, carrying a babe, and demurely followed by his wife. They sat in the pew across; the woman coughed, and again the nave, the ceiling and the altar were filled with hollow echoes. But other worshippers now came, and their arrival seemed fully to arouse the little chapel for its service, dispelling its ghostly sounds for the rustlings of life.

In the midst of this Brent picked up a book of prayer, and on its first page wrote: "And not for your sake?"--then pa.s.sed it to her with the pencil.

She read it, closed the place on the tip of her gloved finger, and slowly raised her eyes full again upon the crucifix. The pencil slipped from her lap and rolled beneath the pew, but when he moved to recover it she shook her head;--and whatever the answer might have been remained a secret between herself and the torn Christ.

Someone moved behind the chancel rail, touching with a lighted taper the wick of each holy candle until the altar sparkled with a score of tiny flames. She thought of his altar--his secret altar, and its tiny taper flame.

Now the man across from them laid his sleeping baby in its mother's lap, quietly and awkwardly arose, and tiptoed out. He appeared again in the choir loft, removed his coat and waistcoat, spat upon his hands and grasped the bellows handle. Over this once, twice, thrice he bent, as though bowing before a symbol of the Trinity, and throughout the church fluttered a low, trembling sigh of the organ, as it breathed its first deep breaths of life since the morning service. It was not a mighty instrument, but the nun who demurely came and sat upon the bench, now touched the keys, and its harmonies held the little chapel in the grove enthralled.

The sun was almost down as they turned homeward. It was the same drive, except that the cool of evening was in the air, and a heavier fragrance came from the tangles on either side.

"Forgive me if I'm quiet," she said. "I haven't been to church for so shamefully long, and it so recalls the sweet years spent across there in the convent, that--that I suppose I'm moody."

"I believe I understand almost how you feel. But do you know what I thought when the light was shining through that window on your face?"

"Oh, please, Brent," her voice trembled, "I'm not a bit ready for you to tell me anything you think about me--ever!"

He saw a mist in her eyes, and for awhile kept silent.

"I wonder why it is," he gently asked, "that men stand in such awe of a girl's tears?"

"It isn't the tears, I believe," she tried to laugh, "but intuitively in awe of the mysterious things which cause them. Women must be very silly about it. I know I'm getting to be, for in all my life I've never wanted to cry so many times as this summer. Maybe it's nerves. But sometimes we do feel so helpless that just the sheer weight of sorrow, or the buoyancy of happiness, will sort of press tears from our eyes, in spite of ourselves."

"Which of those hidden forces has caused these?"

"Neither," she looked brightly up at him. "There aren't any tears, you see."

After they had gone another mile in silence, he drily observed:

"Church hasn't left a very salubrious effect on us. It's made me feel as desolate as a haunted house, and the only impression I brought away is that a man must spit on his hands to pump an organ. Funny sort of a stunt, wasn't it--having him come up out of the audience that way?"

"It didn't seem strange to me, Brent. You're probably too literal."

"There isn't such a tremendous scope for the poetic, when a rube wiggles out of his clothes right in the pulpit, you might say!"

"Audience and pulpit," she gaily cried. "What a born churchman you are!

But, Brent," her voice grew wondrously sincere, "there was something more to it: the simplicity with which that farmer, whose boots have been in the soil for six days, could merge so actually into those things which make for ideality! How few of us who cannot play an organ would deign to offer ourselves as pumpers for its prosy bellows! Think of the music we are denying ourselves, and others about us, merely because we lack the kind of spirit to take off our coats and," she looked whimsically up at him, "spit on our hands before the world!"

She knew that he was listening, but little suspected how much her words had moved him until he spoke. There was a depth of pa.s.sion in his voice which she had never heard except upon that one day when he called her as she was going toward the house.

"What eyes have you? To what white heights do you dare climb? You seem literally to push away the clouds and gaze straight through that dome which marks the farthest limit of my imaginings! You seem to tear it with your hands, and look through!--you put your lips to the rift and whisper with the angels!--and you always bring a little something back which does men good! Oh, Jane, Jane! How honestly I wish--"

But he did not finish the wish, and in another few minutes they were at Flat Rock, with Bob welcoming them and helping her to alight.

CHAPTER XXVII

A QUICK FUSE