Flossy went to the window and stood looking out into the starless night.The pain in her heart deepened with every moment.
"If there was only some one to ask, some one to say a word to me," she sighed to herself. "It seems as though I could never go to sleep with this feeling clinging to me. I wonder what can be the matter? Perhaps I am sick and am going to die. It feels almost like that, and I am not fit to die—I am afraid. I wonder if Ruth Erskine is afraid to die? I have almost a mind to ask her. I wonder if she ever prays? People who are not afraid of death are always those who pray. Perhaps she will to-night. I feel as though I wanted to pray: I think if I only knew how it would be just the thing to do. If she kneels down I mean to go and kneel beside her."
These were some of the thoughts that whirled through her brain as she stood with her nose pressed to the glass. But Ruth did not pray. She went around with the composed air of one who was at peace with all the world; and when her elaborate preparations for rest were concluded she laid her head on her pillow without one thought of prayer.
"Why in the name of sense don't you come to bed?" she presently asked, surveying with curious glance the quiet little creature whose face was hidden from her, and who was acting entirely out of accordance with anything she had ever seen in her before. "What can you possibly find to keep you gazing out of that window? It can't be called star-gazing, for to my certain knowledge there isn't a single star visible; in fact, I should say nothing could be visible but the darkness."
For a minute Flossy made no answer. She did not move nor turn her head; but presently she said, in a low and gentle voice:
"Ruth, should you be afraid to die?"
"To die!" said Ruth; and I have no means of telling you what an astonished face and voice she had. "Flossy Shipley, what do you mean?"
"Why, I meanthat," said Flossy, in the same quiet tone. "Of course we have got to die, and everybody knows it; and what I say is, should you be afraid if it were to-night, you know?"
"Humph!" said Ruth, turning her pillow and waiting to beat it into shape before she spoke further. "I haven't the least idea of dying to-night."
"But how can you besureof that? You mighthaveto die to-night, you know people do sometimes."
"I know one thing, am perfectly certain of it, and that is, that you will take cold standing there and making yourself dismal. You are shivering like a leaf, I can see you from here. If that is all the good to be gotten from the 'religious impressions' that they harp about being so great here, the less religion they have the better, and there is quite little enough you may be sure." Saying which, Ruth turned her pillow again and her head, so that she could not see the small creature at the window. She was unaccountably rasped, not to say startled, by her question, and she did not like to be startled; she liked to have her current of life run smoothly.
As for Flossy, she gave a great sigh of disappointment and unrest, and turned slowly from the window. She had vaguely hoped for help of some sort from Ruth, and as she lay down on her prayerless pillow she said to herself, "If she had only knelt down I should certainly have done so, too; and perhaps I might have been helped out of this dreadful feeling." Yet so ignorant was she of the way that it never once occurred to her to kneel alone and pray.
No more words were spoken by those two girls that night, but each lay awake for a long time and tossed about restlessly. Ruth had been most effectually disturbed, and try as best she could it was impossible to banish the memory of those quiet words: "You mighthaveto die to-night; people do, you know." To actuallyhaveto do something that she had not planned to do and was not quite ready for, would be a new experience to this girl. Yet when would she be ready to plan for dying? At last she grew thoroughly vexed, and vented her disgust on the "religionists" who got up camp-meeting excitements for the purpose of turning weak brains like Flossy Shipley's. After that she went to sleep.
"Flossy Shipley, for pity's sakedon'trig your self up in that awful cashmere! It rains yet and you will just be going around with five wrinkles on your forehead all day, besides spoiling your dress."
It was morning, and the door of communication between the two sleeping-rooms being thrown open the four girls were in full tide of talk and preparation for Fairpoint. Flossy, though kept her strangely quiet face and manner; the night had not brought her peace; she had tossed restlessly for hours, and when at last she slept it was only to be haunted with troubled dreams. With the first breath of morning she opened her eyes and felt that the weight of yesterday was still pressing on her heart.
"WhatshallI wear?" she asked, in an absent, bewildered way of Eurie, who had objected to the cashmere.
"I'm sure I don't know. Didn't you bring anything suited to the rain? Let me go fishing in that ponderous trunk and see if I can't find something."
The "fishing" produced nothing more suitable than a heavy black silk, elaborately trimmed, and looking, as Eurie phrased it, "elegantly out of place."
Through much confusion and frolicking the four were at last entering the grounds at Chautauqua. By reason of their superior knowledge Marion and Flossy led the way, while the others followed eagerly, looking and exclaiming.
"I'll tell you what it is, girls," Eurie said, eagerly. "Let's come over here and board. We'll have a tent or a cottage. A tent will be jollier, and it will be twice as much fun as to stay at the hotel."
There being no dissenting voice to this proposal, they started in much glee to look up a home; only Flossy demurred timidly.
"Can't we go to the meeting, girls, and look for the tent afterward? The meeting has commenced; I hear them singing."
"It's nothing in the world but a Bible service," Eurie said. "That man at the gate handed me a programme. Who wants to go to a Bible service? We have Bibles enough at home. We want to be on hand at eleven o'clock, because Edward Eggleston is to speak on 'The Paradise of Childhood.' My childhood was anything but paradise, but I am anxious to know what he will make of it."
Flossy succumbed, of course, as every one expected she would; and the party went in search of tents and accommodations. It was no easy matter to suit them, as the patient and courteous President found.
"I don't like the location of any one of them," Ruth Erskine said. Of course she was the hardest to suit. "Why can't we have one of those in that row on the hill?"
"Those are the guest tents, ma'am."
"The guest tents?" Eurie exclaimed, in surprise. "I wonder if they entertain guests here! Who are they?"
"Why, those who have been invited to take part in the exercises, of course. You did not suppose that they paid their own expenses and did the work besides, did you?"
This explanation was given by Marion, who, by virtue of her experience as reporter was better versed in the ways of these great gatherings than the others.
"What an idea!" Eurie said. "Fancy being a guest and speaking at this great meeting. Being a person of distinction, you know; so that people would be pointing you out, and telling their neighbors who you were.
"There goes Miss Mitchell. She is the leading speaker on Sunday-school books. How does that sound? Only, on the whole, I should choose some other department than Sunday-school books; they are all so horridly good—the people in them, I mean—that one can't get through with more than two in a season. I tried to read one last week for Sunday, but I abandoned it in despair."
This was an aside, while Ruth was questioning the President. She was looking dismayed.
"Can't we have one of the tents on that side near the stand?"
"Those were taken months ago. This is a large gathering, you know."
"I should think it was! Then, it seems, we must go back to the hotel. I thought you would be glad to let us have accommodations at any price."
The gentlemanly President here carefully repressed an amused smile.Here were people who had evidently misunderstood Chautauqua.
"Oh, yes," he said, "we can give you accommodations, only not the very best, I am sorry to say. Our best tents were secured many months ago. Still, we will do the best we can for you, and I think we can make you entirely comfortable."
"People have different ideas as to the meaning of that word," Miss Eurie said, loftily.
Then she moved to another tent, over which she exclaimed in dismay:
"Why, the bed isn't made up! Pray, are we to sleep on the slats?"
"Oh, no. But you have to hire all those things, you know. Have you seen our bulletin? There are parties on the ground prepared to fit up everything that you need, and to do it very reasonably. Of course we can not know what degree of expense those requiring tents care to incur, so we leave that matter for them to decide for themselves. You can have as many or as few comforts as you choose, and pay accordingly."
"And are all four of us expected to occupy this one room?" There was an expression of decided disgust on Miss Erskine's face.
"Why, you see," explained the amused President, "this tent is designed for four; two good-sized bedsteads set up in it; and the necessity seems to be upon us to crowd as much as we can conveniently. There will be no danger of impure air, you know, for you have all out-doors to breathe."
"And you really don't have toilet stands or toilet accommodations! What a way to live!"
Another voice chimed in now, which was the very embodiment of refined horror.
"And you don't have pianos nor sofas, and the room isn't lighted with gas! I'm sure I don't see how we can live! It is not what we have been accustomed to."
This was Marion, with the most dancing eyes in the world, and the President completed the scene by laughing outright. Suddenly Ruth discovered that she was acting the part of a simpleton, and with flushed face she turned from them, and walked to a vacant seat, in the opposite direction from where they were standing.
"We will take this one," she said, haughtily, without vouchsafing it a look. "I presume it is as good as any of them, and, since we are fairly into this absurd scrape we must make the best of it."
"Or the worst of it," Marion said, still laughing. "You are bent on doing that, I think, Ruthie."
By a violent effort and rare good sense Ruth controlled herself sufficiently to laugh, and the embarrassment vanished. There were splendid points about this girl's character, not the least among them being the ability to laugh at a joke that had been turned toward herself. At least the effect was splendid. The reasons, therefore, might have been better. It was because her sharp brain saw the better effect that her ability to do this thing immediately produced on the people around her. But I shall have to confess that a poise of character strong enough to gracefully avert unpleasant effects arising from causes of her own making ought to have been strong enough to have suppressed the causes.
The question of an abiding-place being thus summarily disposed of, the party set themselves to work with great energy to get settled, Marion and Eurie taking the lead. Both were used to both planning and working, and Marion at least had so much of it to do as to have lost all desire to lead unnecessarily, and therefore everything grew harmonious.
There was a good deal of genuine disgust in Ruth's part of it, though, her eyes having been opened, she bravely tried to hide the feeling from the rest. But you will remember that she had lived and breathed in an atmosphere of elegant refinement all her life, accepting the luxuries of life as common necessities until they had really become such to her, and the idea of doing without many things that people during camp life necessarily find themselvesobligedto do without was not only strange to her but exceedingly disagreeable. The two leaders being less used to the extremes of luxury, and more indifferent to them by nature, could not understand and had little sympathy with her feeling.
"We shall have to go back after all to the hotel," Eurie said, as she dived both hands into the straw tick and tried to level the bed. "We have too fine a lady among us; she cannot sleep on a bedstead that doesn't rest its aristocratic legs on a velvet carpet. She doesn't see the fun at all. I thought Flossy would be the silly one, but Flossy is in a fit of the dumps. I never saw her so indifferent to her dress before. See her now, bringing that three-legged stand, without regard to rain! There is one comfort in this perpetual rain, we shall have less dust. After all, though, I don't know as that is any improvement, so long as it goes and makes itself up into mud. Look at the mud on my dress! That tent we were looking at first would have been ever so much the best, but after Ruth's silliness I really hadn't the face to suggest a change—I thought we had given trouble enough. She makes a mistake; she thinks this is a great hotel, where people are bound to get all the money they can and give as little return, instead of its being a place where people are striving to be as accommodating as they can, and give everybody as good a time as possible."
In the midst of all this talk and work they left and ran up the hill to the Tabernacle, where the crowds were gathering to hear Dr. Eggleston. It was a novel sight to these four girls; the great army of eager, strong, expectant faces; the ladies, almost without an exception, dressed to match the rain and the woods, looking neither tired nor annoyed about anything—looking only in earnest. To Ruth, especially, it came like a revelation. She looked around her with surprised eyes. There were intellectual faces on every hand. There was the hum of conversation all about her, for the meeting was not yet opened, and the tone of their words was different from any with which her life had been familiar; they seemed lifted up, enthused; they seemed to have found something worthy of enthusiasm. As a rule Ruth had not enjoyed enthusiastic people; they had seemed silly to her; and you will admit that there is a silly side to the consuming of a great deal of that trait on the dress for an evening party, or the arrangement of programmes for a fancy concert. Just now she had a glimmering fancy that there might be something worthy of arresting and holding one's eager attention.
"They look alive," she said, turning from right to left among the rows and rows of faces. "They look as though they had a good deal to do, and they thought it was worth doing."
Then, curiously enough, there came suddenly to her mind that question which she had banished the night before, and she wondered if these people had all really answered it to their satisfaction.
Flossy took a seat immediately in front of the speaker. She was hungry for something, and she did not know what to call it—something that would set her fevered heart at rest. As for Marion and Eurie, they hoped with all their hearts that the "Hoosier Schoolmaster" would give them a rich intellectual treat, at least Marion was after the intellectual. Eurie would be contented if she got the fun, and a man like Dr. Eggleston has enough of both those elements to make sure of satisfying their hopes. But would he bring something to help Flossy?
"He doesn't look in the least as I thought he did." It was Eurie who whispered this, and she nudged Marion's arm by way of emphasis as she did it.
Marion laughed.
"How did you think he looked?"
"Oh, I don't know—rough, rather."
Whereupon Marion laughed again.
"That is the way some people discriminate," she whispered back. "You think because he wrote about rough people he must be rough; and when one writes about people of culture and elegance you think straightway that he is the personification of those ideas. You forget, you see, that the world is full to the brim with hypocrisy; and it is easier to be perfect on paper than it is anywhere else in this world."
"Or to be a sinner either, according to that view of it."
"It is easy enough to be a sinner anywhere. Hush, I want to listen."
For which want the people all about her must have been very thankful. Our young ladies gave Dr. Eggleston their attention at the moment when he was drawling out in his most nasal and ludicrous tones the hymn that used to be a favorite in Sunday-schools ninety years ago:
"Broad is the road that leads to death,And thousands walk together there,But wisdom shows a narrow path,With here and there a traveler."
The manner in which part of these lines were repeated was irresistibly funny. To Eurie it was explosively so; she laughed until the seat shook with mirth. To be sure, she knew nothing about modern Sunday-schools; for aught that she was certain of, they might have sung that very hymn in the First Church Sunday-school the Sabbath before; and it made not the least atom of difference whether they did or not; the way in which Dr. Eggleston was putting it was funny, and Eurie never spoiled fun for the sake of sentiment. Presently she looked up at Marion for sympathy. That young lady's eyes were in a blaze of indignation. What in the world was the matter with her? Surely she, with her hearty and unquestioning belief innothing, could not have been disturbed by any jar! Let me tell you a word about Marion. Away back in her childhood there was a memory of a little dingy, old-fashioned kitchen, one of the oldest and dreariest of its kind, where the chimney smoked and the winter wind crawled in through endless cracks and crannies; where it was not always possible to get enough to eat during the hardest times; but there was a large, old-fashioned arm-chair, covered with frayed and faded calico, and in this chair sat often of a winter evening a clean-faced old man, with thin and many-patched clothes, with a worn and sickly face, with a few gray hairs straggling sadly about on his smooth crown: and that old man used often and often to drone out in a cracked voice and in a tune pitched too low by half an octave the very words which had just been repeated in Marion's hearing. What of all that? Why, that little gloomy kitchen was Marion's memory of home; that old, tired man was her father, and he used to sing those words while his hand wandered tenderly through the curls of her brown head, and patted softly the white forehead over which they fell; and all of love that there was in life, all that the word "tenderness" meant, all that was dear, or sweet or to be reverenced, was embodied in that one memory to Marion. Now you understand the flashing eyes. She did not believe it at all; she believed, or thought she did, that the "broad" and "narrow" roads were all nonsense; that go where you would, or do what you would, all the roads led todeath; and that was the end. But the father who had quavered through those lines so many times had staked his hopes forever on that belief, and the assurance of it had clothed his face in a grand smile as he lay dying—a smile that she liked to think of, that she did not like to hear ridiculed, and to her excited imagination Dr. Eggleston seemed to be ridiculing the faith on which the hymn was built. "They are more thorough hypocrites than I supposed," she said, in scorn, and hardly in undertone, in answer to Eurie's inquiring look. "I don't believe the stuff myself, but I always supposed the ministers did. I gave some of them at least credit for sincerity, but it seems it is nothing but a fable to be laughed to scorn."
"Why, Marion!" Eurie said, and her look expressed surprise and dismay. "He is not making fun of religion, you know; he is simply referring to the inappropriateness of such hymns for children."
"What is so glaringly inappropriate about it if they really believe the Bible? I'm sure it says there that there are two roads, one broad and the other narrow; and that many people are on one and but few on the other. Why shouldn't it be put into a hymn if it is desirable to impress it?"
"I'm sure I don't know," Eurie said, unaccustomed to being put through a course of logic. "Only, you know, I suppose he simply means that it is beyond their comprehensions."
"They must have remarkably limited comprehensions then if they are incapable of understanding so simple a figure of speech, as that there are two ways to go, and one is harder and safer than the other. I understood it when it was sung to me—and I was a very little child—and believed it, too, until I saw the lives of people contradict it; but if I believed, it still I would not make public sport of it."
At this point Ruth leaned forward from the seat behind and whispered:
"Girls, do keep still; you are drawing the attention of all the people around you and disturbing everybody."
After that they kept still; but the good doctor had effectually sealed one heart to whatever that was tender and earnest he might have to say. She sat erect, with scornful eyes and glowing cheeks, and when the first flush of excitement passed off was simply harder and gayer than before. Who imagined such a result as that? Nobody, of course. But how perfectly foolish and illogical! Couldn't she see that Dr. Eggleston only meant to refer to the fact that literature, both of prose and poetry, had been improved by being brought to the level of childish minds, and to reprove that way of teaching religious truth, that leaves a somber, dismal impression on youthful hearts? Apparently she could not, since she did not. As for being absurd and illogical, Ididnot say that she wasn't. I am simply giving you facts as they occurred. I think myself that she was dishonoring the memory of her father ten thousand times more than any chance and unmeant word of the speakers could possibly have done. The only trouble was, that she was such an idiot she did not see it; and she prided herself on her powers of reasoning, too! But the world is full of idiots. She sat like a stone during the rest of the brilliant lecture. Many things she heard because she could not help hearing; many she admired, because it was in her to admire a brilliant and charming thing, and she could not help that, either; but she could shut herheartto all tenderness of feeling and all softening influences, and that she did with much satisfaction, deliberately steeling herself against the words of a man because he had quoted a chance line that her father used to sing, while she lived every day of her life in defiance of the principles by which her father shaped his life and his death! Verily, the ways of girls are beyond understanding.
Eurie enjoyed it all. When Dr. Eggleston told of the men that, as soon as their children grew a little too restless, had business down town, she clapped her hands softly and whispered:
"That is for all the world like father. Neddie and Puss were never in a whining fit in their lives that father didn't at once think of a patient he had neglected to visit that day, and rush off."
She laughed over the thought that women were shut in with little steam engines, and said:
"That's a capital name for them; we have three at home that are always just at the very point of explosion. I mean to write to mother and tell her I have found a new name for them."
When he suggested the blunt-end scissors, and the colored crayons with which they could make wonderful yellow dogs, with green tails and blue eyes, her delight became so great that she looked around to Ruth to help her enjoy it, and said:
"You see if I don't invest in a ton of colored crayons the very first thing I do when I get home; it is just capital! So strange I never thought of it before."
"You did not think of it now," Ruth said, in her quiet cooling way. "Give the speaker credit for his own ideas, please. Half the world have to do the thinking for the other half always."
"That is the reason so much is left undone, then," retorted Eurie, with unfailing good humor, and turned back to the speaker in time to hear his description of the superintendent that was so long in finding the place to sing that the boys before him went around the world while he was giving the number.
"Slow people," said she, going down the hill afterward. "I never could endure them, and I shall have less patience with them in future than ever. Wasn't he splendid? Ruth, you liked the part about Dickens, of course."
"A valuable help the lecture will be to your after-life if all you have got is an added feeling of impatience toward slow people. Unfortunately for you they are in the world, and will be very likely to stay in it, and a very good sort of people they are, too."
It was Marion who said this, and her tone was dry and unsympathetic.
Eurie turned to her curiously.
"You didn't like him," she said, "did you? I am so surprised; I thought you would think him splendid. On your favorite hobby, too. I said to myself this will be just in Marion's line. She has so much to say about teaching children by rote in a dull and uninteresting way. You couldn't forgive him for reciting that horrid old hymn in such a funny way. Flossy, do you suppose you can ever hear that hymn read again without laughing? What was the matter, Marion? Who imagined you had any sentimental drawings toward Watts' hymns?"
"I didn't even know it was Watts' hymn," Marion said, indifferently. "But I hate to hear any one go back on his own belief. If he honestly believes in the sentiments of that verse, and they certainly are Bible sentiments, he shouldn't make fun of it. But I'm sure it is of no consequence to me. He may make fun of the whole Bible if he chooses, verse by verse, and preach a melting sermon from it the very next Sabbath; it will be all the same to me. Let us go in search of some dinner, and not talk any more about him."
"But that isn't fair. You are unjust, isn't she, Ruth? I say he didn't make fun of religion, as Marion persists in saying that he did."
"Of course not," Ruth said. "A minister would hardly be guilty of doing that. He was simply comparing the advanced methods of the present with the stupidity of the past."
And obstinate Marion said then he ought to get a new Bible, for the very same notions were in it that were when she was a child and learned verses. And that was all that this discussion amounted to. Nobody had appealed to Flossy. She had stood looking with an indifferent air around her, until Marion turned suddenly and said:
"What did the lecture say to you, Flossy? Eurie seems very anxious to get out of it something for our 'special needs,' as they say in church. What was yours?"
Flossy hesitated like a timid child, flushed and then paled, and finally said, simply:
"I have been thinking ever since he spoke it of that one sentence, 'Rock-firm, God-trust, has died out of the world.' I was wondering if it were true, and I was wishing that it wasn't."
All the girls looked at each other in astonished silence; such a strange thing for Flossy to say.
"What of it?" said Marion, presently. "What if it has? or, rather, what if it were never in the world?"
"It wasn't that side of it that I thought about. It was what if it were."
"And what then?"
"Why, then, I should like to see the person who had it, just to see how he would seem."
Marion laughed somewhat scornfully.
"Curiosity is at the bottom of your wise thought, is it? Well, my little mousie, I am amazingly afraid you are destined never to discover how it will seem. So I wouldn't puzzle my brains about it. It might be too much for them. Shall we go to dinner?"
You should have seen our four young ladies taking their first meal at Chautauqua! It was an experience not to be forgotten. They went to the "hotel." This was a long board building, improvised for the occasion, and filled with as many comforts as thenecessitiesof the occasion could furnish. To Miss Erskine the word "hotel" had only one sort of association. She had been a traveler in her own country only, and it had been her fortune to be intimate only with the hotels in large cities, and only with those where people go whose purses are full to overflowing. So she had come to associate with the name all that was elegant or refined or luxurious.
When the President of the grounds inquired whether they would have tickets for the hotel or one of the boarding-houses, Miss Erskine had answered without hesitation:
"For the hotel, of course. I never have anything to do with boarding-houses. They are almost certain to be second rate."
Said President kept his own counsel, thinking, I fancy, that here was a girl who needed some lessons in the practical things of this life, and Chautauqua hotels were good places in which to take lessons.
Imagine now, if you can, the look of this lady's face, as they made their way with much difficulty down the long room, and looked about them on either side for seats.
"A hotel, indeed!" she said, in utter contempt and disgust, as one of the attendants signaled them and politely drew back the long board seat that did duty in the place of chairs, and answered for five, or, if you were good natured and crowded, for six people. He was just as polite in his attentions as if the unplaned seat had been a carved chair of graceful shape and pattern. One would suppose that Ruth might have taken a hint from his example. But the truth is, she belonged to that class of people who are so accustomed to polite attentions that it is only their absence which calls forth remark.
"The idea of naming this horrid, dirty old lumber-room a hotel!" and she carefully and disdainfully spread her waterproof cloak on the seat before she took it.
Eurie's merry laugh rang out until others looked and smiled in sympathy with her fun, whatever it was.
"What in the world did you expect, Ruthie? I declare, you are too comical! I verily believe you expected Brussels carpets, and mirrors in which you could admire yourself all the while you were eating."
"I expected ahotel," Ruth said, in no wise diminishing her lofty tone. "That is what is advertised, and people naturally do not look for so much deception in a religious gathering. This is nothing in the world but a shanty."
Chautauqua was doing one thing for this young lady which surprised and annoyed her. It was helping her to get acquainted with herself. Up to this time she had looked upon herself as a person of smooth and even temperament, not by any means easily ruffled or turned from her quiet poise. She had prided herself on her composed, gracefully dignified way of receiving things. She never hurried, she never was breathless and flushed, and apologetic over something that she ought or ought not to have done, which was a chronic state with Eurie. She never was in a thorough and undisguised rage, as Marion was quite likely to be. She was, in her own estimation, a model of propriety. All this until she came to Chautauqua. Now, great was her surprise to discover in herself a disposition to be utterly disgusted with things that to Marion were of so little consequences as to be unnoticed, and that to Eurie were positive sources of fun.
Doubtless you understand her better than she did herself. The truth is, it is a comparatively easy matter to be gracious and courteous and unruffled when everything about you is moving exactly according to your mind, and when you can think of nothing earthly to be annoyed about. There are some natures that are deceiving their own hearts in just such an atmosphere as this. They are not the lowest type of nature by any means. The small, petty trials that come to every life are beneath them. If it rains when they want to walk they can go in a handsome carriage, and keep their tempers. If their elegant new robes prove to be badly made they can have them remodeled and made more elegant with a superior composure. In just so far are they above the class who can endure nothing in the shape of annoyances or disappointment, however small. The fact is, however, that there are petty annoyance,notcoming in their line of life, that would be altogether too much for them. But of this they remain in graceful ignorance until some Chautauqua brings the sleeping shadows to the surface.
"What is your private explanation of the word 'hotel'?" Marion asked. She was in an argumentative mood, and it made almost no difference to her which side of the question she argued. "Webster says it is a place to entertain strangers, but you seem to attach some special importance to the term."
"Is that all that Webster says?"
The questioner was not Ruth, but a man who sat just opposite to them at the table, and while he waited for his order to be filled watched with amused eyes the four gills who were evidently in a new element. He was not a young man, and his gray hairs would have arrested the pertness of the reply on Marion's tongue at any other time than this, but you remember that she was not in a good mood. She answered promptly; "Yes, sir, he says ever so many things. In fact, he is the most voluminous author I ever read."
The gentleman laughed. The pertness seemed to amuse him.
"Didn't I limit my question?" he said, pleasantly. "He is voluminous, and what a sensible book he has written. I wish all authors had given us so much information. But I meant, is that all he says about hotels? Doesn't he justify your friend just a little bit in her expectations?"
"I'm sure I don't know," Marion said, amused in turn at the good-natured interest which the elderly gentleman took in the question. "He has said so much that I haven't had time to digest it all. If you have, won't you please enlighten me as to his wisdom on this subject?" "'Especially one of some style or pretensions,'" quoted the old gentleman, "so Webster adds. You see I am interested in the subject," and he laughed pleasantly. "I have been looking it up, which must be my apology for addressing you young ladies, if so old a man as I must apologize for being interested in girls. The fact is, I had occasion to talk with a young man yesterday who took the people to task most roundly for that very name, on the ground that they had no right to it—that it was a misnomer. I have been struck with the thought that nothing is trivial, not even the name that happens to be chosen for a house where onewaitsfor his dinner," with a strong emphasis on the word "wait," which Eurie understood and laughed over.
"Except the remarks that people make about such things," Marion said, answering the first part of the sentence and bestowing a wicked glance on Ruth. "They are trivial enough. Did you agree with the young gentleman?"
"No. I thought it all over and consulted Webster, as I said, and came to the conclusion that in view of this being a more pretentious house than either of the others they had a right to the word. Webster doesn't say what degree of pretension is necessary, you know."
The lifting of Ruth's eyebrows at this point was so expressive that all the party laughed. But the old gentleman grew grave again in a moment, as he said:
"But the thought that impressed me most was what a very perfect system of faith the religion of Jesus Christ is; how completely it commends itself to the human heart, since the very slightest departure from what is regarded as strictly true and right, when it is done by a Christian (society or individual), is noticed and commented upon by lookers-on; they seem to know of a certainty that it is not according to the Spirit of Christ."
This last sentence struck Marion dumb. How fond she was of caviling at Christian lives! Was she really thus giving all the time an unconscious tribute to the truth and purity of the Christian faith?
It was a merry dinner, after all, eaten with steel forks and without napkins, and with plated spoons, if you were so fortunate as to secure one. The rush of people was very great, and, with their inconvenient accommodations, the process of serving was slow.
Marion, her eyes being opened, went to studying the people about her. She found that courteous good-humor was the rule, and selfishness and ungraciousness the exception. Inconveniences were put up with and merrily laughed over by people who, from their dress and manners, could be accustomed to only the best.
Marion took mental notes.
"They do not act in the least like the mass of people who stop at railroad eating-houses for their dinner; they are patient and courteous under difficulties; they did not come here for the purpose of being entertained; if they did the accommodations wouldn't satisfy."
There was another little thing that interested Marion. As the tables kept filling, and those who had been served made room for those who had not, she found herself watching curiously what proportion of the guests observed that instant of silent thanks with covered eyes. It was so brief, so slight a thing, I venture that scarcely a person there noticed it, much less imagined that there was a pair of keen gray eyes over in the corner looking and calculating concerning them.
"What if they all had to wear badges," she said to herself, "badges that read 'I am a Christian,' I wonder how many of them it would influence to different words than they are speaking, or to different acts? I wonder if theydoall wear them? I wonder if the distinction is really marked, so one looking on could detect the difference, though all of them are strangers? I mean to watch during these two weeks. 'The proper study of mankind is man.' Very well, Brother Pope, a convenient place for the study of man is Chautauqua. I'll take it up. Who knows but I may learn a new branch to teach the graded infants in Ward No. 4."
Ruth did not recover her equanimity. She was rasped on every side. Those two-tined steel forks were a positive sting to her. She shuddered as the steel touched her lips. She had no spoon at all, and she looked on in utter disgust while Eurie merrily stirred her tea with her fork. When the waiter came at last, with hearty apologies for keeping them waiting for their spoons, and the old gentleman said cordially, "All in good time. We shall not starve even if we get no spoons," she curled her lip disdainfully, and murmured that she had always been accustomed to the conveniences of life, and found it somewhat difficult to do without them.
When one is in the mood for grumbling there is no easier thing in the world than to find food for that spirit, and Ruth continued her pastime, waxing louder and more decided after the genial old man had left their neighborhood.
"What is the use in fault-finding?" Eurie said at last, half petulantly. She was growing very tired of this exhibition. "What did you expect? They are doing as well as they can, without any doubt. Just imagine what it must be to get conveniences together for this vast crowd. They did not expect anything like such a large attendance at first; I heard them say so and that makes it harder to wait upon them. But of course they are doing just as well as they can, and we fare as well as any of them."
"Don't you be so foolish as to believe that," Ruth said, with a curling lip. "If you could see behind the scenes you would soon discover something very different. That is why it is so provoking to me. Let people who cannot afford to pay any better take such as they can get. But what right had they to suppose that we had not the money to pay for what we wish? I'm sureI'mnot a pauper! You will find that there is a place where the select few can get what they want, and have it served in a respectable manner, and I say I don't like it; I have been accustomed to the decencies of life."
Just behind them the talk was going on unceasingly, and one voice, at this point, rising higher than the others, caught the attention of our girls. Eurie turned suddenly and tried to catch a glimpse of the speaker. Something in the voice sounded natural. A sudden movement on the part of the gentleman between them and she caught a glimpse of the face. She turned back eagerly.
"Girls, that is Mrs. Schuyler Germain!"
"Where?" Ruth asked, with sudden interest in her voice.
"Over at that table, in a water-proof cloak and black straw hat, and eating boiled potatoes with a steel fork. What about being behind the scenes now, Ruthie?"
To fully appreciate this you must understand that even among the Erskines to get as high as Mrs. Schulyer Germain was to get as high as the aristocracy of this world reached; not that she lived in any grander style than the Erskines, or showed that she had more money, but every one knew that her bank accounts were very heavy, and, besides, she was the daughter of Gen. Wadsworth Hillyer, of Washington, and the great-granddaughter, by direct descent, of one of England's noblemen. She was traveled and cultivated, and all but titled through her youngest daughter.
Could American ambition reach higher? And there she sat, at a table made of pine boards, eating boiled potatoes with a two-tined steel fork! Could English nobility sink lower! Ruth looked over at her in quiet surprise for a moment, and then gave her head its haughty toss as she met Eurie's mischievous eyes, and said:
"It is not an aristocracy of position here, then. The leaders keep all their nice things and places for themselves. That is smaller than I supposed them to be."
At this particular moment there was an uprising from the table just behind them. Half a dozen gentlemen leaving their empty plates, and in full tide of talk, making their way down the hall. The girls looked and nudged each other as they recognized them. The younger of the two foremost had a face that can not easily be mistaken, and Eurie, having seen it once, did not need Marion's low-toned, "That is Mr. Vincent." And Ruth herself, thrown off her guard, recognized and exclaimed over Dr. Hodge.
This climax was too much for Eurie. She threw down her fork to clap her hands in softly glee.
"Oh, Ruthie, Ruthie! How has your dismal castle of favoritism faded! Yonder is the Queen of American society eating pie at this very instant with the very fork which did duty on her potato, and here goes the King of the feast, wiping his lips on his own handkerchief instead of a damask napkin."
It was at this moment, when Ruth's follies and ill humors were rising to an almost unbearable height, that her higher nature asserted itself, and shone forth in a rich, full laugh. Then, in much glee and good feeling, they followed the crowd down the hill to the auditorium.
For the benefit of such poor benighted beings as have never seen Chautauqua, let me explain that the auditorium was the great temple where the congregation assembled for united service. Such a grand temple as it was! The pillars thereof were great solemn trees, with their green leaves arching overhead in festoons of beauty. I don't know how many seats there were, nor how many could be accommodated at the auditorium. Eurie set out to walk up and down the long aisles one day and count the seats, but she found that which so arrested her attention before she was half-way down the central aisle that she forgot all about it, and there was never any time afterward for that work. I mean to tell you about that day when I get to it. The grand stand was down here in front of all these seats, spacious and convenient, the pillars thereof festooned with flags from many nations. The large piano occupied a central point; the speaker's desk at its feet, in the central of the stand; the reporters' tables and chairs just below.
"I ought to have one of those chairs," Marion said, as they passed the convenient little space railed off from the rest of the audience. "Just as if I were not a real reporter because I write in plain good English, instead of racing over the paper and making queer little tracks that only one person in five thousand can read. If I were not the most modest and retiring of mortals I would go boldly up and claim a seat."
"What is to be next?" Ruth asked. "Are we supposed to be devoted to all these meetings? I thought we were only going to one now and then. We won't be alive in two weeks from now if we pin ourselves down here."
"In the way that we have been doing," chimed in Eurie. "Just think here we have been to every single meeting they have had yet, except the one last night and one this morning."
"We are going to skip every one that we possibly can," said Marion. "But the one that is to come just now is decidedly the one that we can't. The speaker is Dr. Calkins, of Buffalo. I heard him four years ago, and it is one of the few sermons that I remember to this day. I always said if I ever had another chance I should certainly hear him again. I like his subject this afternoon, too. It is appropriate to my condition."
"What is the subject?" Flossy asked, with a sudden glow of interest.
"It is what a Christian can learn from a heathen. I'm the heathen, and I presume Dr Calkins is the Christian. So he is to see what he can learn from me, I take it, and naturally I am anxious to know. Flossy isn't interested in that; I can see it from her face. She knows she isn't a heathen—she is a good proper little Christian. But it is your duty, my dear, to find what you can learn from me."
"What can he possibly make of such a subject as that?" Ruth asked, curiously. "I don't believe I want to hear him. Is he so very talented, Marion?"
"I don't know. Haven't the least idea whether he is what you call talented or not. He says things exactly as though he knew they were so, and for the time being he makes you feel as though you were a perfect simpleton for not knowing it, too."
"And you like to be made to feel like a 'perfect simpleton?' Is that the reason you resolved to hear him again?"
"I like to meet a man once in a while who knows how to do it, and for the matter of that I wouldn't mind being made to feel the truth of the things that he says, if one could onlystaymade. It isn't the fault of the preaching that it all feels like a pretty story and nothing else; it is the fault of the wretched practicing that the sheep go home and do. It makes one feel like being an out-and-out goat, and done with it, instead of being such a perfect idiot of a sheep."
At this point the talk suddenly ceased, for the leaders began to assemble, and the service commenced. Ruth and Marion exchanged comic glances when they discovered the "heathen" of the afternoon to be Socrates. And Marion presently whispered that she was evidently to play the character of the old fellow's wife, and Eurie whispered to them both:
"Now I want to know if that horrid Zantippe was Socrates' wife! Upon my word I never knew it before. She wasn't to blame, after all, for being such a wretch."
"What do you mean?" Marion whispered back, with scornful eyes. "Socrates was the grandest old man that ever lived."
"Pooh! He wasn't. He didn't know any more than little mites of Sunday-school children do nowdays. I never could understand why his philosophy was so remarkable, only that he lived in a heathen country and got ahead of all the rest, but if he were living now he would be a pigmy."
"I wish he were," Marion said, with her eyes still flashing. "I would like to see such a life as he lived."
This girl was a hero worshiper. Her cheeks could burn and her eyes glow over the grand stories of old heathen characters, and she could melt to tears over their trials and wrongs. And yet she passed by in haughty silence the sublime life that of all others is the only perfect one on record, and she had no tears to shed over the shameful and pitiful story of the cross. What a strange girl she was! I wonder if it be possible that there are any others like her?
Meantime Flossy Shipley came to no place where her heart could rest. She went through that first day at Chautauqua in a sort of maze, hearing and yet not hearing, and longing in her very soul for something that she did not hear—that is, she did not hear it distinctly and fairly stated, so that she could grasp it and act upon it; and yet it was shadowed all around her, and hinted at in every word that was uttered, so that it was impossible to forget that there was a great something in which the most of these people were eagerly interested, and which was sealed to her.
She felt it dimly all the while that Dr. Eggleston was speaking; she felt it sensibly when they sang; she felt it in the chance words that caught her ear on every side as the meeting closed—bright, fresh words of greeting, of gladness, of satisfaction, but every one of them containing a ring that she could hear but not copy. What did it mean? And, above all, why did she care what it meant, when she had been happy all her life before without knowing or thinking anything about it?
As they went down the hill to dinner, she loitered somewhat behind the others, thinking while they talked. As the throng pressed down around them there came one whose face she instantly recognized; it belonged to the young man who had spoken to her on the boat the evening before. The face recalled the earnest words that he had spoken, and the tone of restful satisfaction in which they were spoken. His face wore the same look now—interested, alert, butat rest. She coveted rest. It was clear that he also recognized her, and something in her wistful eyes recalled the wordsshehad spoken.
"Have you found the Father's presence yet?" he asked, with a reverent tone to his voice when he said "the Father," and yet with such evident trust and love that the tears started to her eyes.
She answered quickly:
"No, I haven't. I cannot feel that he is my Father."
They went down the steps just then, and the crowd rushed in between them, so that neither knew what had become of the other; only that chance meeting; he might never see her again. Chautauqua was peculiarly a place where people met for a moment, then lost each other, perhaps for all the rest of the time.
"I may never see her again," Evan Roberts thought, "but I am glad that I said a word to her. I hope in my soul that she will let Him find her."
If Flossy could have heard this unspoken sentence she would have marveled. "Let Him find her!" Why, she was dimly conscious that she was seeking for Him, but no such thought had presented itself as that God was really seeking after her.
She went on, still falling behind, and trying to hide the rush of feeling that the simple question had called forth. She was very quiet at the dinner table; she was oblivious to steel forks or the want of spoons; these things that had hitherto filled her life and looked of importance to her had strangely dwindled; she was miserably disappointed; she had looked forward to Chautauqua as a place where she could have such a "nice" time. That word "nice" was a favorite with her, and surely no one could be having a more wretched time than this; and it was not the rain, either, over which she had been miserable all day yesterday, nor her cashmere dress; she didn't care in the least now whether it cleared or not; and as to her dress, she had torn her silk twice, and it was sadly drabbled, but she did not even care for that; she wanted—what? Alas for the daughter of nominally Christian parents, living among all the privileges of a cultured Christian society, shedid not know what the wanted.
Dr. Calkins had one eager listener. If he could have picked out her earnest, wistful eyes among that crowd of upturned faces he would have let old Socrates go, and given himself heart and soul to the leading of this groping soul into the light. As it was he hovered around it, touching the subject here and there, thrilling her with the possibilities stretching out before her; but he was thinking of and talking all the while to those who had reached after and secured this "something" that to her was still a shadow. Now and then the speaker brought the quick tears to her eyes as he referred to those who had followed the teaching of his lips with sympathetic faces and answered the appeal to their hearts with tears; but her tears were different from those—they were the tears of a sick soul, longing for light and help.
The entire party ignored the evening meeting. Marion declared that her brain whirled now, so great had been the mental strain; Ruth was loftily indifferent to any plan that could be gotten up, and Eurie's wits were ripe for mischief; Flossy's opinion, of course, was not asked, nobody deeming it possible that she could have the slightest desire to go to meeting. In fact, Eurie put their desertion on the ground that Flossy had been exhausted by the mental effort of the day, and needed to be cheered and petted. She on her part was silent and wearily indifferent; she did not know what to do with her heavy heart, and felt that she might as soon walk down by the lake shore as do anything else; so down to the shore they went, and gave themselves up to the full enjoyment of the novel scene—an evening in the woods, great, glowing lights on every side, great companies of people passing to and fro, boats touching at the wharves and sending up group after group to the central attraction, the grand stand; singing, music by thousands of voices ringing down to them as they loitered under the trees on the rustic seats.
"I declare, it must be nice in heaven for a little while."
It was Eurie who made this somewhat startling discovery and announcement after a lull had fallen upon their mirth.
"Have you been there to see?" illogically asked Marion, as she threw a tiny stone into the water and watched the waves quiver and ripple.
Eurie laughed.
"Not quite, but this must be a little piece of it—this music, I mean. I am almost tempted to make an effort after the real thing. How exquisitely those voices sound! I'm very certain I should enjoy the music, whether I should be able to get along with the rest of the programme or not. What on earth do you suppose they do there all the time, anyway?"
"Where?"
"Why, in heaven, of course; that is what I was talking about. I believe you are half asleep, Flossy Shipley; you mustn't go to sleep out here; it isn't quite heaven yet, and you will take cold. Honestly, girls, isn't it a sort of wonderment to you how the people up there can employ their time? In spite of me I cannot help feeling that it must be rather stupid; think of never being able to lie down and take a nap!"
"Or read a novel," added Marion. "Isn't that your favorite employment when you are awake, Eurie? I'm sure I don't know much about the occupations of the place; I'm not posted; there is nothing about it laid down in our geography; and, in fact, the people who seem to be expecting to spend their lives there are unaccountably mum about it. I don't at this moment remember hearing any one ever express a downright opinion, and I have always thought it rather queer. I asked Nellie Wheden about it one day when she was going on about her expected tour in Europe. She had bored me to death, making me produce all my geographic and historic lore for her benefit; and suddenly I thought of an expedient for giving myself a little peace and a chance to talk about something else. 'Come, Nellie,' I said, 'one good turn deserves another. I have told you everything I can think of that can possibly be of interest to you about Europe; now give me some information about the other place where you are going. You must have laid up a large stock of information in all these years.'"
"What on earth did she say?" Ruth asked, curiously, while Eurie was in great glee over the story.
"She was as puzzled as if I had spoken to her in Greek. 'What in the world can you be talking about?' she said. 'I'm not going anywhere else that I know of. My head has been full of Europe for the last year, and I haven't talked nor thought about any other journey.' Well, I enlightened her as to her expectations, and what do you think she said? You wouldn't be able to guess, so I'll tell you. She said I was irreverent, and that no one who respected religion would ask such questions as that, and she actually went off in a huff over my wickedness. So, naturally, I have been chary of trying to get information on such 'reverent' subjects ever since."
Whereupon all these silly young ladies laughed long and heartily over this silly talk. Flossy laughed with the rest, partly from the force of habit and partly because this recital struck her as very foolish. Every one of them saw its inconsistent side as plainly as though they had been Christians for years; more plainly, perhaps, for it is very strange what blinded eyes we can get under certain systems of living the religious faith.
Presently the society of these young ladies palled upon themselves, and they agreed one with another that they had been very silly not to go to meeting, and that another evening they would at least discover what was being said before they lost the opportunity for getting seats.
"Stupid set!" said Eurie "who imagined that the crowd would do such a silly thing as to rush to that meeting, as if there were nothing else to do but to go flying off for a seat the moment the bell rings? I thought there would be crowds out here, and we would make some pleasant acquaintances, and perhaps get a chance to take a boat ride."
And so, in some disgust, they voted to bring the first day at Chautauqua to a sudden close and try tent life.
Silence and darkness reigned in the tent where our girls had disposed of themselves. It was two hours since they had come in. It took more than an hour, and much talking and more laughter, not to mention considerable grumbling on Ruth's part, before everything was arranged to their satisfaction—or, as Ruth expressed it, "to their endurance" for the night.
Three of the girls were sleeping quietly, their fun and their discontents alike forgotten, but Flossy tossed wearily on her bed, turned her pillow and turned it back again, and sought in vain for a quiet spot. With the silence and the darkness her unrest had come upon her again with tenfold force. She felt no nearer a solution of her trouble than she had in the morning; in fact, the pain had deepened all day, and the only definite feeling she had about it now was that she could not live so; that something must be done; that she must get back to her home and her old life, where she might hope to forged it all and be at peace again.
Into the quiet of the night came a firm, manly step, and the movement of chairs right by her side, so at least it seemed to her. All unused to tent life as she was a good deal startled she raised herself on one elbow and looked about her in a frightened way before she realized that the sounds came from the tent next to theirs. Before her thoughts were fairly composed they were startled anew; this time with the voice of prayer.
Very distinct the words were on this still night air; every sentence as clear as though it had really been spoken in the same tent. Now, there was something peculiar in the voice; clearly cut and rounded the words were, like that of a man very decided, very positive in his views, and very earnest in his life. There was also a modulation to the syllables that Flossy could not describe, but that she felt And she knew that she had heard that voice twice before, once on the boat the evening before and once as they jostled together in the crowd on their way to dinner.
She felt sorry to be unwittingly a listener to a prayer that the maker evidently thought was being heard only by his Savior. But she could not shut out the low and yet wonderfully distinct sentences, and presently she ceased to wish to, for it became certain that he was praying for her. He made it very plain. He called her "that young girl who said to-day that she could not think of thee as her Father; who seems to want to be led by the hand to thee."
Did you ever hear yourself prayed for by an earnest, reverent, pleading voice? Then perhaps you know something of Flossy's feelings as she lay there in the darkness. She had never heard any one pray for her before. So destitute was she of real friends that she doubted much whether there were one person living who had ever before earnestly asked God to make her his child.
That was what this prayer was asking. She lifted the white sleeve of her gown, and wiped away tear after tear as the pleading voice went on. Very still she was. It seemed to her that she must not lose a syllable of the prayer, for here at last was the help she had been seeking, blindly, and without knowing that she sought, all this long, heavy day. Help? Yes, plain, clear, simple help. How small a thing it seemed to do! "Show her her need of thee, blessed Jesus," thus the prayer ran. And oh!hadn'the showed her that? It flashed over her troubled brain then and there: "It is Jesus that I need. It is he who can help me. I believe he can. I believe he is the only one who can." This was her confession of faith. "Then lead her to ask the help of thee that she needs. Just to come to thee as the little child would go to her mother, and say, 'Jesus, take me; make me thy child.'" Only that? Was it such a little,littlething to do? How wonderful!
The praying ceased, and the young man who had remembered the stranger to whom God had given him a chance to speak during the day, all unconscious that other ear than God's had heard his words of prayer, laid himself down to quiet sleep. Flossy lay very still. The rain had ceased during the afternoon, and now some solemn stars were peeping in through the chinks in the tent and the earth was moon-lighted. She raised herself on one elbow and looked around on her companions. How soundly asleep they were!
Another few minutes of stillness and irresolution. Then a white-robed figure slipped softly and quietly to the floor and on her knees, and a low-whispered voice repeated again and again these words:
"Jesus, take me; make me thy child."
It wasn't very long afterward that she lay quietly down on her pillow, and earth went on exactly as if nothing at all had happened—knew nothing at all about it—even the sleeper by her side was totally ignorant of the wonderful tableau that had been acted all about her that evening. But if Eurie Mitchell could have had one little peep into heaven just then whatwouldher entranced soul have thought of the music and the enjoyment there? For whatmustit be like when there is "joy in the presence of the angels in heaven"?