.
that sadness underlay civil regret. Perhaps May had been mistaken in postponing her call until the parsonage was in perfect order.
“She means to call very soon. She thought it would be unneighborly to intrude before you had recovered from the fatigue of removal and travel. Mr. Wayt was my father’s guest for a day or two, you know, before your arrival, and I have since had the pleasure of meeting him several times and of hearing him preach this morning.”
In the pause that succeeded the speech the church bell began to ring for afternoon service. Under the impression that he had lost caste in not attending upon the second stated ordinance of the sanctuary he offered a lame explanation.
“I am afraid I am not an exemplary church-goer. But I find one sermon as much as I can digest and practice from Sunday to Sunday. My mother doesn’t like to hear me say it. She thinks such sentiments revolutionary and uncanonical, and no doubt she is right.”
“Anybody is excusable for preferring to worship ‘under green apple boughs’ to-day,” observed Hester, with uncharacteristic tact. “You see we have always lived in cities, great and small. We have been used to brick walls and narrow, high houses, with paved backyards, with cats on the fences”—disgustfully—“and wet clothes flapping in your eyes if you tried to pretend to ruralize. Everybody hasn’t as much imagination as Young John Chivery, who said the flapping of sheets and towels in his face ‘made him feel like he was in groves.’”
“Fairhill has preserved the rural element remarkably well, when one considers her tens of thousands of inhabitants, her water supply and electric lights,” said March; “and luckily one doesn’t need much imagination to help out his enjoyment of the world on this Sunday afternoon.”
His tone was so respectfully familiar, his bearing so easy, the girls forgot that he was a stranger.
“It wasn’t your Dickens who said it, but you can, perhaps, tell me who did write a verse that has been running in my unpoetical brain ever since I entered your fairy bower,” he said by and by.
“The orchard’s all a-flutter with pink;
Robins’ twitter, and wild bees’ humming
Break the song with a thrill to think
How sweet is life when summer is coming.
“That is the way it goes, I believe. It is a miracle for me to recollect so much rhyme. The robins and bees must have helped me out.”
“I wish I knew who did that!” sighed Hester. “Oh! what it must be to write poetry or paint pictures!”
March’s glance of mirthful suspicion changed at sight of the knotted brow and wistful eyes.
“One ought to be thankful for either gift,” he said quietly. “I was thinking just now how I should like to make a picture of what I saw as I ran up the hill. May I try some day?”
Hetty drew herself up and looked inquiry. Hester’s hands fluttered, painful scarlet throbbed into her cheeks.
“Can you draw? Do you paint? Are you an artist?” bringing out the last word in an excited whisper.
March was too much touched to trifle with her agitation. “I try to be,” he answered simply, almost reverently.
“And would you—may I—would it annoy you—Hetty! ask him. You know what I want!”
“My darling!” The cooing, comforting murmur was passing sweet. “Be quiet for one moment, and you can put what you want to say into words.” As the fragile form quivered under her hand, a light seemed to dawn upon her. “You see, Mr. Gilchrist, my niece loves pictures better than anything else and—she never has met a real, live artist before,” the corners of her mouth yielding a little. “She has had a great longing to know how the beautiful things that delight her are made—how they grow into being. Is that it, dear?”
Hester nodded, her eyes luminous with tears she strove to drive back.
March struck his hands together with boyish glee.
“I have it! I will make a study of ‘orchards all a-flutter with pink,’ and you shall see me put in every stroke. May I begin to-morrow? Blossom-time is short. How unspeakably jolly! May we, Miss Alling?”
The proposition was so ingenuous, and Hester’s imploring eyes were so eloquent, that the referee turned pale under the heart-wrench demur cost her.
“Dear!” she said soothingly, to the invalid, “it would not be right to promise until we have consulted your mother. Mr. Gilchrist is very kind. Indeed”—raising an earnest face whose pallor set him to wondering—“you must believe that we do appreciate your goodness in offering her this great happiness. But—Hester, love, we must ask mamma.”
March had seen Mrs. Wayt in church that forenoon, and been struck anew with her delicate loveliness. Could she, with that Madonna face, be a stern task-mistress? With the rise of difficulties, his desire to paint the picture increased. That this unfortunate child, with the artist soul shining piteous through her big eyes, should see the fair creation grow under his hand had become a matter of moment. As poor Hester’s effort to express acquiescence or dissent died in a hysterical gurgle, and a shamed attempt to hide her hot face with her hands, the tender-hearted fellow arose to take leave.
“I won’t urge my petition until you have had time to think it over. But I don’t withdraw it. May I bring my sister over to see you both? She is fond of pictures, too, and dabbles in watercolors on her own account. Excuse me—and Thor—for our unintentionally unceremonious introduction to your notice, and thank you for a delightful half-hour. Good-afternoon!”
Hetty looked after him, as his elastic stride measured off the orchard slope—a contradiction of strange mortification and strange delight warring within her. It was as if a young sun-god had paused in the entrance of a gruesome cave, and talked familiarly with the prisoners chained to the walls. With all her resolute purpose to oppose the intimacy which she foresaw must arise from the proposed scheme of picture-making, she could not ignore the straining of her spirit upon her bonds.
“Oh!” wailed Hester, lowering her hands, “I didn’t mean to be so foolish! I will be brave and sensible, but you know, Hetty, I have never had anything like this offered to me before. It is like dying with thirst with water before one’s eyes, to give it up. And when he said: ‘Blossom-time is short,’ it rushed over me that I never had any—I can never have any. I am just a withered, useless, ugly bud that will never be a flower.”
An agony of sobs followed.
“My precious one!” Hetty’s tears flowed with hers. “Do I ever forget your sorrows? Are you listening, dear? If possible, you shall have this one poor little pleasure. You must trust your mother’s love and mine, to deny you nothing we can safely give. If we must refuse, it is only bearing a little more!”
The going out of the May day was calm as with remembered happiness, but the chill that lurks in the imperfectly tempered air of the newborn season, awaiting the departure of the sun, was so pronounced by seven o’clock that Hetty called upon Homer to build a fire in the sitting room, where she and Hester were sitting. The children were sent to bed at eight o’clock. Mrs. Wayt was lying down in her chamber with one of her frequent headaches, rallying her forces against her husband’s return from the long walk he found necessary “to work off the cumulative electricity unexpended by the day’s services.”
“I belong to the peripatetic school of philosophy,” he said to a parishioner whom he met two miles from home.
“He was forging ahead like a trained prize-fighter,” reported the admiring pewholder to a friend. “Nothing of the sentimental weakling about him!”
March and May Gilchrist, pausing upon the parsonage porch, at sound of a voice singing softly and clearly within, saw, past a half-drawn sash curtain, Hetty rocking back and forth in the firelight, with Hester in her arms. The cripple’s head was thrown back slightly, bringing into relief the small, fine-featured face and lustrous eyes.