The First Soprano Part 4

Mr. Mercer threw his head back and ran his fingers nervously through his wavy locks. His eyes were burning and there was a bright red spot on either cheek.

Winifred spoke out impulsively:

"Oh, Mr. Mercer, there is reality! I know there is somewhere, and I--I am just beginning--but I mean to be a true worshiper, myself."

He looked at her, and the gleam in his dark eyes softened.

"Forgive me," he said, "I spoke too strongly. Yes, I believe there is reality--a little--somewhere," and he smiled. Something in her soft brown eyes as he looked in them carried him many years back, when eyes something like them looked down on him, while a voice sang sacred words which he knew the heart loved well. Yes, there was reality somewhere.

CHAPTER IV

ADELE

Winifred awoke Tuesday morning with melody in her heart. She moved about her room with the exhilaration of a fresh joy in living. She took her Bible, which still wore the genteel, unsullied dress of a stranger, and turned to the place she wished to read. She had not got beyond the text of Sunday:

"The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshiper shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth."

She pondered the text. "Shall worship the Father," she mused. "Oh, how sweet! That august One whom I feared is '_the Father_.' He loves me!"

She went with her book to the open window and stood, a fair priestess in her white morning dress, and looked out over a portion of her Father's wide domain. Oh, how warm and bright the sunlight that lit all things with glory! How fair were the distant hills beyond the city, with their varied dress of wood and meadow! In the garden below, how each group of flowers and the green sward answered with joy to the caress of the sun. How exultantly the lilies stood, and she could catch the incense from the bed of tiny cl.u.s.tering flowers nearest her window. She lifted her face toward the sky of melting summer blue, and sang softly:

"Holy, holy, holy; Lord G.o.d Almighty!

All Thy works shall praise Thy name, in earth and sky and sea; Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty; G.o.d in three persons, blessed Trinity!"

She looked again at the words whose entrance had given light, and read farther: "For the Father seeketh such to worship Him."

"He has been seeking me!" she cried, and some glimmering apprehension of the great love of the Father which seeks the fellowship of sincere and simple children, made her bosom heave and her eyes fill with tears, "_He loves me_," she repeated as before, and her heart nestled itself in the great truth like a bird that has found its nest.

Presently she looked again from her window and saw Hubert walking in the garden.

"Dear Hubert!" she said to herself. "I wish he knew."

With an impulse she laid her book hastily down and ran down the stairs and into the garden. She flew noiselessly across the soft gra.s.s and surprised Hubert from behind, clasping his arm with a cheerful "Good morning!"

He looked down on her glowing face and kissed it.

"How bright you look," he said. "Were you up with the birds? I heard you singing your matins with them."

"Did you hear me?" said Winifred, with a blush at being overheard.

"Yes. What makes you so happy, Winnie?"

"Oh, Hubert," she cried, and she clasped his arm more tightly, "My heart is almost breaking with joy! I think I have begun--to know G.o.d!"

He looked at her with a surprised hunger in his dark eyes.

"And do you find the knowledge such a joy?" he asked, with deep sadness in his own voice.

"Oh, yes, Hubert," she said. "He is so good!"

Later in the day a small breeze swept in the front door of the Gray Mansion, past the maid, up the stairway, and to the door of Winifred's little sitting-room. It came with the person of Miss Adele Forrester.

"h.e.l.lo," said a bright voice. "Anybody here?"

Winifred rose from her quaint little window-seat with an expression of pleasure.

"Oh, Adele! I am so glad to see you."

The two young ladies kissed each other and sat down to talk with the easy familiarity of old friends.

"Dear!" cried exclamatory Miss Forrester. "I am out of breath!--I have raced so! I left home an hour ago, but was beguiled by some fascinating bargains in b.u.t.terworth's windows. Do see that love of a thing for ninety-eight cents. Did you ever see such a bargain? I wouldn't let them send it for I wanted you to see it."

The fascinating trifle was admired, and then Miss Forrester flew at the chief matter of her visit enthusiastically.

"Do you know what is in the wind, Winifred? Professor Black, who leads the choir in the Linden Street church, is going to get up a comic opera with a cast from the various choirs, and I am invited. We are to go to Northville and give it in the little one-horse theater there. Won't it be gay? We shall astonish the natives of that small town! Have you had your invitation?"

Winifred shook her head.

"How calm you are. I am very much excited about it already. You know I like that sort of thing. It isn't decided what we shall give, but probably Pinafore, or Patience, or some old thing. They won't care at Northville. Do say what you think of it, Winifred? Don't be so unecstatic."

Winifred smiled, not very merrily. "I can't get ecstatic," she said.

"I shall not be in it."

"You will not be in it!" Adele cried. "Oh, why not?"--coaxingly.

"Doesn't your father approve of it?--or your mother?--of going off like that, I mean? It will be perfectly proper. We shall be chaperoned."

"Oh, that's not it," said Winifred. "I have left the choir."

Adele opened her bright eyes wide in astonishment.

"Left the choir!" she exclaimed under her breath, and then leaned back in her chair with a gesture of comical despair of expressing herself.

Winifred could not help laughing at her friend's dismay. She said nothing and Adele soon recovered herself.

"A little tiff with the leader or somebody?" she queried. "Such things are not unknown to us. I am prepared to take your part, Winnie, right or wrong. But you don't mean you've left for good? Oh, come and sing with us at St. John's--that would be lovely!"

Winifred girded herself mentally for her task. She and lively Miss Forrester had never discussed spiritual things together. They spoke freely of their choirs and of church, but that never seemed dissonant with the most frivolous social things. Now as Winifred thought of the real Holy Place and the worship there "in spirit and in truth," it seemed difficult to speak of it. She began bravely, and began at the beginning, with Mr. Bond's sermon. She rehea.r.s.ed many of the things that he said, and told frankly of her own conviction of the truth and how it troubled her. Adele listened gravely and with a sympathetic moisture in her eyes as Winifred told, with little hitches in her voice and evident effort at self-control, of her determination to leave the theater of her unreal worship, and then of the way she had found into the real presence of G.o.d and of His forgiveness. She paused here, and Adele put her arms impulsively about her and kissed her.

"Winnie," she said, "you know I always loved you. I love you better than ever now."

Then they both cried, though they could not have explained to each other why. Adele was the first to recover herself.

"I am such a goose," she said. "I always cry. But now, Winnie," she added, "are you not going to keep on singing, only 'in spirit and in truth,' as you say?"

"I hope I shall keep on singing," said Winifred, slowly, "but I dare not trust myself, just now anyhow, to go on with the choir. I am so used to singing for applause"--and she blushed at the remembrance of such a motive in the house of the Lord--"or for music's sake, I am afraid I should find myself doing so still. I mean to worship G.o.d truly," and a look of determination settled the sensitive face into resolute lines; "and I shall try to do that which will help me most to that end. It seems to me now that that will be to join the others un.o.bserved. Perhaps I shall see it differently some day, but now I feel it safer to put my poor, vain, little self as far out of sight as possible and try to think of G.o.d."