GRAPES AND THORNS.

GRAPES AND THORNS.BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”CHAPTER II.A GLANCE FROM MR. SCHÖNINGER.Nonebut people of routine ever used their prayer-books while F. Chevreuse was reading or singing Mass, and it was seldom that even such people used them the first time they heard him; for it was not enough that those who assisted should unite their intention with that of the priest, and then pray their own prayers, recalled now and then to the altar by the sound of the bell: their whole attention was riveted there from the first.That penetrating voice, which enunciated every word with such exquisite clearness, speaking rapidly only because so earnest, was heard throughout the church, and its vivid emphasis gave new life to every prayer of the service. When F. Chevreuse saidDominus vobiscum!one replied as a matter of course—would as soon, indeed, have neglected to answer his face-to-face greeting on the street as this from the altar; theOrate, fratres, compelled the listener to pray; and, at theDomine, non sum dignus, one felt confounded and abashed.Was it, then, you asked yourself, the first time this priest had said Mass, that he should stand so like a man who sees a vision? No; F. Chevreuse had been fifteen years a priest. Had he, perhaps, an intellect more high than the ordinary, or a superior sanctity? No, again; though a clearer mind or a nobler Christian soul one would scarcely wish to see. The peculiarity lay chiefly, we should guess, in a large, impassioned, and generous heart, which, like a strong fountain for ever tossing up its freshening tide, overflowed his being, and made even the driest facts bud and blossom perennially. In that heart, nothing worthy of life ever faded or grew old. Its possessions were dowered with the freshness of immortal youth.Still, these gifts might have been partially ineffectual if nature had not added to them a sanguine temperament, and the priceless blessing of a body capable of enduring severe and prolonged labor. F. Chevreuse was spared that misery of a bright intelligence and an active will for ever pent and thwarted by physical incompetence, the soul by its nature constantly compelled to issue mandates to the body, which the body by its weakness is as inevitably compelled to disobey. In that wide brain of his, thoughts had ample elbow-room, and could range themselves without crowding or confusion; and the broad shoulders and deep chest showed with what full breathing the flame of life was fanned. His mind was always working, yet there was no sign of a feverish head; the eyes were steady, and the close-cut gray hair grew so thick as to form a crown.For the rest, let his life speak. We respect the privacy of such a soul; and, though we would fain show him real and admirable, we sketch F. Chevreuse with a shy pencil.The church of S. John was a new and unfinished one on Church Street. This street ran east and west, parallel with the Cocheco, and half-way up the South Hill, which here sloped so abruptly that the buildings on the lower side had one more story at the rear than in front, and those on the upper side one more story in front than at the rear. In consequence of this deceptive appearance, those who liked to put the best foot forward preferred to live on the upper side, though it doomed them to a north light in their houses, while those who thought more of comfort than of display chose the other side with a southward frontage.The church was set back so as to leave a square in front, and its entrance was but four or five steps above the street; but at the back a large and well-lighted basement was visible. The priest’s house stood close to the street, on the eastern side of this square, and so near that between the back corner of its main part and the front corner of the church there was scarcely space for two persons to stand abreast. This narrow passage, screened by a yard or so of iron railing, gave access to a long flight of stairs that led to the basements of the church and of the house.Seen from the front, this house was a little, melancholy, rain-streaked, wooden cottage, which might be regarded as a blot upon the grandeur of the church, or an admirable foil for it, as one had a mind to think. The door opened almost on the sidewalk, and beside the door were two dismal windows with the curtains down. In the space above, another curtained window was set between the two sharp slants of the roof. On the side opposite the church, where a lane ran down to the next street, the prospect was more cheering. You saw there an L as wide as the main building, though not so deep, and projecting from it so as to give another street door at the end of a veranda, and allow space for two windows at the rear of the house. This L was Mrs. Chevreuse’s peculiar domain, as the house was that of the priest. Her sitting-room and bedroom were here; and no one acquainted with the customs of the place ever came to the veranda door unless they could claim an intimate friendship with the priest’s mother.The parlor with the two dismal front windows beside the entrance was used as a reception-room. Back of that was the priest’s private sitting-room, with two windows looking out on the veranda, and one window commanding the basement entrance of the church, the pleasant green space around it, and the flight of stairs that led up to the street. F. Chevreuse’s arm-chair and writing-table always stood in this window, and behind them was a door leading into a little side-room containing a strong desk where he kept papers and money, and a sofa on which he took an occasional nap.Up-stairs were two sleeping-rooms; down-stairs, as the hill sloped, the kitchen, dining-room, and the two rooms occupied by Jane, the cook, and Andrew, the priest’s man. There was space enough in the house, and it had the charm of irregularity; but from the street, as we have said, it was a melancholy-looking structure. F. Chevreuse, however, could not have been better pleased with it had it been a palace. Within, all was comfort and love for him; and he probably never looked at the outside. The new church and his people engrossed his thoughts.Mrs. Chevreuse was not so indifferent. “It would not look well for me to go up on a ladder, and paint the outsidewalls,” she said to herself, her only confidant in such matters; “but, if it could be turned inside-out for one day, I would quickly have it looking less like an urchin with a soiled face.”No one could doubt this assertion after having seen the interior of this castle of the rueful countenance. There she could go up on a ladder without shocking any one, and from basement to attic the place was as fresh as a rose. But the nicety was never intrusive. This lady’s house-keeping perspective was admirably arranged, and her point of view the right one. Cleanliness and order dwelt with her, not as tyrants, but as good fairies who were visible only when looked for. If you should chance to think of it, you would observe that everything which should be polished shone like a mirror; that the white was immaculate, the windows clear, and the furniture well-placed. You might recollect that the door was never opened for you by an untidy house-maid, and that no odors from the kitchen ever saluted your nostrils on entering, though a bouquet on the stair-post sometimes breathed a fragrant welcome.Now, housekeepers know that the observance of all these little details of order and good taste involves a great deal of care and labor; but they sometimes forget that their exquisiteménageloses its principal charm when the care and labor are made manifest. It cannot be denied that the temptation is strong now and then to let Cæsar know by what pains we produce these apparently simple results, which he takes as a matter of course; but, when the temptation is yielded to, the results cease to be entirely pleasing. The unhappy man becomes afraid to walk on our carpets, to touch our door-knobs, to sit in our chairs, eat eggs with our spoons, lay his odious pipe on our best table-cover, or tie the curtains into a knot. The touching confidence with which he was wont to ask that an elaborate dinner might be prepared for him in fifteen minutes vanishes from his face like a rainbow tint that leaves the cloud behind. “A cold lunch will do,” he tells you resignedly, and you detect incipient dyspepsia in his countenance. The free motions that seemed to feel infinite space about them are no more. The anxious hero pulls his toga about him in the most undignified and ungraceful manner, lest it should upset a flower-pot or a chair. In fine, the tormenting gadfly of our neatness stings him up and down his days, till he would fain seek refuge and rest in disorder.Mother Chevreuse knew all this perfectly, and behaved herself in so heroic a manner that her son never suspected, what was quite true, that the unnecessary steps he caused her might make several miles a day.One morning after early Mass, toward the last of May, she seated herself in the arm-chair by the window, and watched for the priest to come in from the church. This was a part of her daily programme, and the only time of day she ever occupied what she called his throne. After his breakfast, they did not meet, save incidentally, till supper-time; for, except when they had company, F. Chevreuse dined alone. The mother had perceived that, when they dined together, there had been a struggle between the sense of duty and courtesy which made him wish to entertain her, and the abstraction he naturally felt in the midst of the cares and labors of the day, and, ever on the watch lest she should in any way intrude on his vocation, had herself made this arrangement. The fact that he did not oppose itwas a sufficient proof that it was agreeable to him.This mother was the softer type of her son, as though what you would carve in granite you should first mould in wax. There was the same compact form, telling of health, strength, and activity, the same clear eyes, the same thick gray hair crowning a forehead more wide than high. Their expressions differed as their circumstances did; cheerfulness and good sense were common to both; but, where the priest was authoritative, the woman was dignified.Presently her face brightened, for the fold of a black robe showed some one standing just inside the chapel door, and the next moment F. Chevreuse appeared, his hands clasped behind him, his face bent thoughtfully downward. Seeing him thus for the first time, you are surprised to find him only medium height. At the altar, he had appeared tall. You might wonder, too, what great beauty his admirers found in him. But scarcely had the doubt formed itself in your mind, before it was triumphantly answered. The priest’s first step was into a shadow, his second into sunlight; and, as that light smote him, he lifted his head quickly, and a smile broke over his face. Wheeling about, he fronted the east. The river-courses had hollowed out a deep ravine between him and the sunrise, and the tide of glory flowed in and filled that from rim to rim, and curled over the green hills like wine-froth over a beaker. He stood gazing, smiling and undazzled, his face illuminated from within as from without. It might be said of F. Chevreuse, as it was of William Blake, that, when the sun rose “he did not see a round, fiery disk somewhat like a guinea, but an innumerable company of the heavenly hosts crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!’”The mother watched, but did not interrupt him. She knew well that such moments were fruitful, and that he was storing away in his mind the precious vintage of that spring morning to bring it forth again at some future time fragrant with the bouquet of a spiritual significance. “Glimpses of God,” she called such moods.He threw his head back, and, with a swift glance, took in the whole scene; the fleckless blue overhead, the closely gathered city beneath, the lights and shades that played in the dewy greensward at his feet, and, turning about, his mother’s loving face—a fit climax for the morning.“Bon jour, Mère Chevreuse!” he called out, touching hisbarrette.As he disappeared into the house, Mrs. Chevreuse went into her own sitting-room, which opened from his, and gave a last glance at the table prepared for his breakfast. The preparation was not elaborate. A little stand by the eastern window held a pitcher of milk, a bowl and spoon, and a napkin; and Jane, following the priest up-stairs, added a dish of oatmeal pudding.F. Chevreuse walked briskly through the entry, and threw the street door wide open, then came back singing, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and the King of glory shall come in!” and continued, as he entered the room, his voice hardly settled from song to speech, “What created things are more like the King of glory than light and air? They are as his glance and his breath.”The look that met his was sympathizing, but the words that replied were scarcely an answer to his question. “Your breakfast is cooling, F. Chevreuse,” she said.He took no heed, but, clasping his hands behind him, walked to and frowith a step that showed flying would have been the more congenial motion.“Mother,” he exclaimed, “the mysteries of human nature are as inscrutable as the mysteries of God. Would the angels believe, if they had not seen, that a Mass has been said this morning here in the midst of a crowded city, with only a score or so of persons to assist? Why was not the church thronged with worshippers, and thousands pressing outside to kiss the foundation-stones? When I turned with theEcce Agnus Dei, why did not all present fall with their faces to the floor? And when Miss Honora Pembroke walked away from the communion-railing, why did not every one look at her with wonder and admiration?—the woman who bore her God in her bosom! And just now, when the sun rose”—he stopped and looked at his mother with a combative air—“why did not the people look up and hail it as the signet of the Almighty?”Mother Chevreuse smiled pleasantly. She was used to being set up as a target for these unanswerable questions, especially in the morning, at which time the priest was likely to be, as Jane expressed it, “rather high in his mind.”“If you could take your breakfast, my son,” she suggested.“Breakfast!” He glanced with a look of aversion at the table that held his frugal meal, considered a moment, recognized the propriety of its existence, finally seated himself in his place, and began to eat with a very good appetite. “You were quite right, my lady,” he remarked; “the sunshine was drinking my milk all up. What thirsty creatures they are, those beams!”Let it not be supposed that F. Chevreuse was so ascetical as never to eat except when urged to do so. On the contrary, he took good care to keep up the health and strength necessary for the performance of his multiform duties as the only priest in a large parish, and he used a wise discrimination in allowing others to fast. “Some fasting is almost as bad as feasting,” he used to say. “Besides injuring the health, it clogs the soul. You look down upon eating when you have dined moderately; but, when you have fasted immoderately, the idea of dinner is elevated till it becomes a constellation. I do not wish to starve, till, when I kneel down and raise my eyes, I can think of nothing but roast beef. Asceticism is not an end, but a means.”“Mother,” he said presently, laying down his spoon, “why is it that the oatmeal and milk I get at home are better than that I find anywhere else?”“Children always think the food they get at home better than what they get abroad,” she replied tranquilly.Why should she tell him that what he called milk was cream, and that the making of that “stirabout” was a fine-art, which had been taught Jane line upon line, and precept upon precept, till every grain dropped according to rule, and the motion of the pudding spoon was as exact as a sonnet? Instead of being pleased, he would have been disturbed to know that so much pains had been taken for him.“I like no earthly comfort that has cost any one much trouble or pain,” he would say. Like most persons who have been spared the petty cares of life, he did not know that in this discordant world there is no earthly comfort to any one which is not a pain to some other.Breakfast over, the priest went promptly about his business; and Mrs. Chevreuse, shutting the doorbetween their rooms, brought her work-basket to the stand where the tray had been, and seated herself to mend a rent in asoutane.It was a pleasant room, with its one window toward the church, and an opposite one looking over the city and the distant hills, and most enticingly comfortable, with deep chairs, convenient tables, and tiny stands always within reach, and an open fireplace which was seldom, save at mid-summer, without its little glimmer of fire at some time of day. And even then, if the day was chilly or overcast, the fact that it was mid-summer did not prevent the kindling of Mother Chevreuse’s beltane flame. From this room and the bedroom behind it could be heard on still nights the dashing of the Cocheco among its rocks.Mrs. Chevreuse worked and thought. The sunbeams sparkled on the scissors, needles, bodkins, and whatever bright thing it could find in her work-basket, on her eyeglasses and thimble, on the smooth-worn gold of her wedding-ring, and the tiny needle weaving deftly to and fro in an almost invisible darn, of which the lady was not a little proud. Her mind wove, too; not those flimsy fancies of youth so like spider’s webs upon the grass, that glitter only when the morning dew is on them: the threads of her dream-tapestry ended in heaven, though begun on earth, and their severance could only change hope into fruition. And all the time, while hand and heart slipped to and fro, the lady was aware of everything that went on in the house. She heard Andrew come into the next room with the morning mail, heard the sound of voices while he received his orders for the day, heard him go clumping down-stairs, and out through the kitchen into the chapel. Presently the clumping resounded outside, and, glancing across the room, she saw the old man standing on the basement stairs, his head on a level with her window, looking at her across the space that intervened, and gesticulating, with a twinkling candlestick in each hand.Mother Chevreuse, still holding her work, went and threw the sash up.“I think, madame, begging your pardon, that I can clean these just as well as you can,” says Andrew, with a very positive nod and a little shake that set all the glass drops twinkling and tinkling.“Do you, Andrew?” returned madame pleasantly. “Very well, then, you can clean them, and save me the trouble. But don’t forget to rub all the whiting out of the creases.”Andrew changed countenance as he turned slowly about to descend the stairs. Mrs. Chevreuse had been gradually taking the care of the altar from his rather careless hands, and this had been his diplomatic way of escaping the candlestick cleaning of that day without asking her to do it. He hobbled down-stairs again discomfited, and the lady went smiling back to her work.“It is all very well for Sharp’s rifles,” she remarked, threading her needle; “but I don’t like being fired at in that spiral manner.”Still weaving again with hand and heart, she heard Jane going about, like a neat household machine doing everything in its exact time and place, severe on interruption, merciless on mud or dust, ever ready to have a skirmish on these grounds with Andrew; she heard the rattle of paper from the next room, as letters and parcels were opened, the scratching of F. Chevreuse’s quill as he wrote answers to one or two correspondents, or made up accounts, and the little tap with which he pressed the stamp upon the letters.How peaceful and sweet her life was, all she loved within reach, all she hoped for so sure! She breathed a sigh of thanksgiving, then dropped her work and listened; for the priest was preparing to go out. Every morning was spent by him in collecting for his church. He had found in Crichton a thousand or more practical Catholics, with one shabby old chapel to worship in, and nearly as many nominal Catholics who did not worship at all; and in three years, with scarcely any capital to begin with besides faith, he had raised and nearly finished a large and beautiful church, and gathered into it the greater part of the wanderers.“Be prudent, my son!” the mother had warned him when he began what seemed so venturesome an enterprise.“I am so,” he replied, with decision. “It would be the height of imprudence to leave these people any longer straying like lost sheep. When the Master of the universe commands that a house be built for him, is it for me to fear he will not be able to pay for it?”She said no more. Mme. Chevreuse always remembered to distinguish between the son and the priest, and was never more proud of her motherhood than when her natural authority was confronted by the supernatural authority of her child. But she always sighed when he started on a collecting-tour, for his faith had to be supplemented by hard work, and often he came back worn with fatigue, and depressed by the sights of poverty, sorrow, and sin he had witnessed.All had gone well with the church, however—so well that a new enterprise had been added, and a convent school was just making its small beginning in Crichton.“Is madame visible?” asked a voice smothered against the door.“Entrez!” she answered gaily; and the priest put his head in.“Say a little prayer to S. Joseph for F. Chevreuse to-day,” he said; “for he is collecting for the great note.”“Oh!” She looked anxiously at him, and met a reassuring smile in return.“Never fear, mother!” he said cheerfully. “Do not all the houses and lands belong to God?”“Certainly!” she answered, but sighed to herself as he went away: “it is very true they all belong to God, but I’m afraid the devil has some very heavy mortgages on them.”Later in the day, Miss Ferrier called for Mrs. Chevreuse to go out and visit the sisters at the new convent. “I have taken all I could think of this morning,” she said, and enumerated various useful articles. “I suppose they want nearly everything.”Mrs. Chevreuse commended her liberality. “But I am glad you did not think of cordage,” she added; “for that is the very thing I did remember.”She opened a large basket, and laughingly displayed a collection of ropes and cords varying from coils of clothes-line and curtain-cord to balls of fine pink twine. “Jane’s clothes-line gave out yesterday,” she said, “and that made me think of this.”Miss Ferrier gave a little shiver and shrug. “It is very nice and useful, I know; but ropes always remind me of hanging.”“Naturally,” returned the lady, tying on her bonnet: “that is their vocation.”“But hanging is such a dreadful punishment!” And the young woman shivered again.“Why, my pictures seem to enjoyit,” Mrs. Chevreuse replied, persistently cheerful.“Now, really, madame—““Now, really, mademoiselle,” was the laughing interruption, “what has put your thoughts on such a track this morning? If you want my opinion on the subject, I cannot give it, for I have none. All I can say is that, if I thought any one were destined to kill me, I would instantly write and sign a petition for his pardon, and leave it to be presented to the governor and council at the proper time. Think of something pleasant. I am ready now. We will go out through the house.”She locked the veranda door, and put the key in her pocket. “I have only to give Jane an order. Jane!” she called, leaning out the window.A head appeared from the kitchen window beneath, and the mistress gave her order down the outside of the house. “It saves so much going up and down stairs for two old women,” she explained. “Now, my dear.”They went into the priest’s sitting-room, and again the door was locked behind them, and the key this time hung on a nail over the writing-table. “Wait a moment,” said madame then, and began picking up bits of paper scattered about the room. The priest had torn up a letter, and absently dropped the fragments on the carpet instead of into the waste-basket, and a breeze had been playing with them.“How provoking men are,” remarked Miss Ferrier, stooping for a fragment which a puff of air instantly caught away from her.“Are they?” asked Mrs. Chevreuse quietly. “I do not know, I have so little to do with them. Most people are provoking sometimes, I dare say.”Having made a second ineffectual dive for the strip of paper, the young woman had not patience enough left to bear so cool an evasion. “F. Chevreuse deserves a scolding for strewing this about,” she said.The mother glanced at her with that sort of surprise which is more disconcerting than anger. Miss Ferrier blushed, but would not be so silenced.“If you should oblige him to pick them up once,” she continued, “that would cure him.”“Oblige him!” repeated the mother with a more emphasized coldness. “I never oblige F. Chevreuse to do anything. I should not dream of calling his attention to such a trifle. He has higher affairs on his mind. Now we will go.”Their drive took them through the town by its longest avenue, Main Street, which followed the Saranac half-way to its source. School children in Crichton looked on Main Street as their meridian of longitude, and were under the impression that it reached from pole to pole. It crossed the Cocheco by the central one of three parallel bridges, climbed straight up the steep North Height, and stretched out into the country. The convent grounds were on the west bank of the Saranac, twenty acres of rough land, roughly enclosed, with an old tumble-down house that had been a tavern in the early days of Crichton. It was a desolate-looking place, with not a tree nor flower to be seen, but needed only time and labor to become a little Eden.In the eyes of Sister Cecilia it was even now an Eden. Her ardent and generous nature, made still brighter by a beautiful Christian enthusiasm, saw in advance the blossom and fruit of unplanted trees, and seeds yet in the paper. Full of delight to her was all this planning and labor.She was out-doors when the carriage drove up, in earnest consultation with two workmen, directing the laying out of the kitchen-garden, and, recognizing her visitors, hastened toward them with a cordial welcome. Sister Cecilia was a little over forty years of age, tall and graceful, and had one of those sunny faces that show heaven is already begun in the heart. When she smiled, the sparkling of her deep-blue eyes betrayed mirth and humor.“Dread the labor?” she exclaimed, in answer to a question from Miss Ferrier. “Indeed not! I was so charmed with the idea of coming to this wild place that I had a scruple about it, and was almost afraid I ought not to be indulged. It is always delightful to begin at the beginning, and see the effect of your work.”She led them about the place and told her plans. Here a grove was to be planted, there the path would wind, vines would be trained against this stone wall.“But I don’t see any stone wall,” protested Miss Ferrier.Sister Cecilia laughed. “I see it distinctly, and so will you next year. There are piles of stones on the land which will save us a good deal of money; and we are very likely to have some work done for nothing. Do you know how kind the laborers are to us? Twenty men have offered to do each a day’s work in our garden free of charge. Those are two of them. Now, here we are going to have a large arbor covered with honeysuckle and roses. It must be closed on the east side, because there will be a river-road outside the wall some day, and we should be visible from it. But the south side will be all open, so we can sit under the roses and look down that beautiful river and over all the city. You see the knoll was made on purpose for an arbor.”As they went into the house, a slender shape glided past in the dusk of the further entry. The light from a roof window, shining down the stairs, revealed a face like a lily drooped a little sidewise, a wealth of brown hair gathered back, and a sweet, shy smile. It was as though some one had carried a lighted waxen taper through the shadows where she disappeared.“It is Anita!” exclaimed Miss Ferrier, stopping on the threshold of the parlor. “Why did she not come to us?”“That dear Anita!” said the sister. “She has a piano lesson to give at this hour, and would not dream of turning aside from the shortest road to the music-room. If you were her own mother, Mme. Chevreuse, she would not come to you without permission. Yet such a tender, loving creature I never knew before. Obedience is the law of her life. Next spring she will begin her novitiate.”The house was looked over, the other sisters seen, and the offerings brought them duly presented and acknowledged; then the two ladies started for home.Miss Ferrier was rather silent when they were alone. She had not forgotten the reproof of the morning, and she felt aggrieved by it. Mrs. Chevreuse had known that she was but jesting, and might have been a little less touchy, she thought. What was the matter that almost every one was finding fault with her lately? Her mother accused her of being cross and captious, her lover found her exacting, and Mrs. Gerald had thought her too assuming on one occasion, and yet all she was conscious of was a blind feeling of loss—some such sense as deep-buried roots may have when the sky grows darkover the tree above. Little things that once would have passed by like the idle wind now had power to make her shrink, as the lightest touch will hurt a sore; and trifles that had once given her pleasure now fell dead and flat. The time had been when the mere driving through the city in her showy carriage had elated her, when she had sat in delighted consciousness of the satin cushions, the glittering harness and wheels, and even of the band on the coachman’s hat and the capes that fluttered from his shoulders. Now they sometimes gave her a feeling of weary disgust, and she assured herself that she knew not why. If any suspicion glanced across her mind that a worm was eating into the very centre of her rose of life, and the outer petals withered merely because the heart was withering, she shut her eyes to it, and kept seeking here and there for comfort, but found none. Honora was the only person who ever really soothed her; and, for some reason, or for no reason, even Honora’s soothing now and then held a sting that was keenly felt.“Is it possible she is resenting my reproof?” thought Mrs. Chevreuse, and exerted herself to be pleasant and friendly, but without much success. Miss Ferrier’s affected gaiety was gone, and she had no disposition to resume it.“She is not so good-tempered as I believed,” the priest’s mother thought when they parted, with one of those unjust judgments which the good form quite as often as the bad.Miss Ferrier drove on homeward. She had no need to tell the coachman which way to drive, nor how, for he knew perfectly well that he was to make his horses prance slowly through Bank Street, where, in a certain insurance office up one flight of a granite building, Mr. Lawrence Gerald bit his nails and fumed over a clerk’s desk, and half attended to his business while inwardly protesting against what he called his misfortunes. Perhaps his desk faced the window, or maybe his companions were good enough to call his attention to it; for it seldom happened that Miss Ferrier, glancing up, did not see him waiting to bow to her. He did not love the girl, but he felt a trivial pride in contemplating the evidences of that wealth which was one day to be his unless he should change his mind. He sometimes admitted the possibility of the latter alternative.To-day he was not at the window; but his lady-love had hardly time to be conscious of disappointment, when she saw him lounging in the doorway down-stairs. He came listlessly out as the carriage drew up, and at the same moment Miss Lily Carthusen appeared from a shop near by, and joined them. This young lady took a good deal of exercise in the open air, and might be met almost any time, and always with the latest news to tell.“I congratulate you both,” she said, in her sprightliest manner. “That dreadful organist of yours has put his wrist out of joint, and cannot play again for a month or two. Isn’t it delightful?” She laughed elfishly. “Haven’t you heard of it? Oh! yes; it is true. It happened this morning when he came down the dark stairway in his boarding-house. He tumbled against the dear old balusters, and put his wrist out. I never before knew the good of dark stairways.”“Why, Lily! aren’t you ashamed?” remonstrated Miss Ferrier, smiling faintly.“Do you think I ought to be ashamed?” inquired Miss Lily, withan ingenuous expression in her large, light-blue eyes.“Yes; I do,” replied Miss Ferrier, much edified.“Well, then, I won’t,” was the satisfactory conclusion.“I am sorry for Mr. Glover,” Miss Ferrier remarked gravely.“Now, my dear mademoiselle, please don’t be so crushingly good!” cried the other. “You know perfectly well that he plays execrably, and spoils the singing of your beautiful choir; and you know that you would be perfectly delighted if F. Chevreuse would pension him off. Don’t try to look grieved, for you can’t.”“I don’t pretend to be a saint, Miss Carthusen,” said Annette, dropping her eyes.“And I don’t pretend to be a sinner,” was the mocking retort.Mr. Gerald smiled at this little duel, as men are wont to smile at such scenes. It did not hurt him, and it did amuse him.“But the best part of the business is that F. Chevreuse has asked Mr. Schöninger to play in his stead,” pursued the news-bringer. “He has written a note requesting him to call there this evening.”Miss Ferrier drew her shawl about her, and leaned back against the cushions. She had an air of dismissing the subject and the company which, not being either rude or affected, was so near being stately that Mr. Gerald was pleased with it, and, to reward her, begged an invitation to lunch.“I had just come out for my daily sandwich,” he said; “but if you will take pity on me—“She smilingly made room for him by her side, and drove off full of delight.The afternoon waned, and, as evening approached, Mrs. Chevreuse sat in her own room again, waiting for the priest to come home. She had visited her sick and poor, looked to her household affairs, stepped into the church to arrange some fresh flowers, and see that the candlesticks shone with spotless brilliancy, and was now trying to interest herself in a book while she waited. But it was hard to fix her attention; it constantly wandered from the page. Jane had heard and told her of the accident to their organist, and the rumor that Mr. Schöninger was to take his place; but had not told the news by any means with the glee of a Lily Carthusen. On the contrary, it had seemed to her mind an almost incredible horror that a Jew was to take any part in a service performed before the altar whereon the Lord of heaven was enthroned. To Jane’s mind, every Jew was a Judas. That he could be moral, that he could adore his Creator and pray earnestly for forgiveness of his sins, she did not for an instant believe. The worst criminal, if nominally a Catholic, was in her eyes infinitely preferable to the best Jew in the world.“Andrew declared it was so, madame, and that he carried a note to that Mr. Schöninger before dinner,” she said, concluding her lamentation; “but nothing will make me believe it till I hear F. Chevreuse say so with his own mouth.”“Oh! well, don’t distress yourself about it, Jane,” her mistress replied soothingly. “Perhaps it is a mistake; but, if it is not, you may be sure that F. Chevreuse knows best. He always has good reasons for what he does. Besides, we must be charitable. Who knows but the services of the church and our prayers might, by the blessing of God, convert this man.”“Convert a rattlesnake!” criedJane, too much excited to be respectful.But Mrs. Chevreuse, though she had spoken soothingly to her subordinate, was not herself altogether satisfied. She was a woman of large mind and heart; yet, if any one people in the world came last in her regard, it was the Jewish people. Moreover, she had seen Mr. Schöninger but once, and then at an unfortunate moment when something had occurred to draw that strange blank look over his face. The impression left on her mind was an unpleasant one that there was something dark and secret in the man.“Of course it will all be right,” she said to herself, annoyed that she should feel disturbed for such a cause. “I am foolish to think of it.”The street door was opened and left wide, after F. Chevreuse’s fashion, and she heard his quick, light step in the entry. Dropping her book, she smiled involuntarily at the sound. How sweet to a woman is this nightly coming home of father, son, or husband! He came in, went to the inner room, and opened and closed his desk, then returned to the sitting-room, threw up the corner window, from which he could see into her apartment, and seated himself in his arm-chair, leaning forward as he did so to bow a smiling recognition across to her. His day’s work was as nearly over as it could be. In the morning, he must go out to meet his duties; in the evening, they must seek him. The hour for their social life had come; and though subject to constant interruptions, so that scarcely ten minutes at a time were left them for confidential intercourse, they were free to snatch what they could get.Mrs. Chevreuse put her book away, and opened the door between the two sitting-rooms. “Father,” she said immediately, “is it true that you are going to have that Jew play the organ at S. John’s?”The priest rose hastily, and his mother’s foot was arrested on the threshold; for just opposite her, coming into the room from the entry, was Miss Lily Carthusen, leading a little girl by the hand, and followed by “that Jew”; while, in wrathful perspective, like a thunder-head on the horizon, gloomed the face of Jane, the servant-woman.The silence was only for the space of a lightning-flash, and the flash was not wanting; it shot across the room from a pair of eyes that looked as though they might sear to ashes what they gazed upon in anger. The next moment, the eyes drooped, and their owner was bowing to F. Chevreuse.Miss Carthusen was perfectly self-possessed and voluble, seeming to have heard nothing. “This little wilful girl would come with Mr. Schöninger, madame,” she said; “and, as he is not going back, I was obliged to come and see her home again safely.”The truth was that Miss Lily, who boarded in the same house with the gentleman, had encouraged the child to come, in order that she might accompany her.F. Chevreuse had blushed slightly but he showed no other embarrassment. It was the first time that Mr. Schöninger had entered his house, and he welcomed him with a more marked cordiality, perhaps, on account of the unfortunate speech which had greeted his coming.“You are welcome, sir! I thank you for taking the trouble to come to me. It was my place to call on you, but my engagements left me no time. Allow me to present you to my mother, Mme. Chevreuse.”“My mother” had probably never been placed in so disagreeable a position,but her behavior was admirable. The man she had involuntarily insulted was forced to admit that nothing could be more perfect than the respectful courtesy of her salutation, which maintained with dignified sincerity the distance she really felt, while it expressed her regret at having intruded that feeling on him.“Yet they talk of charity!” he thought; and the lady did not miss a slight curl of the lip which was not hidden by his profound obeisance.The introduction over, she left Mr. Schöninger to the priest, and took refuge with his little friend, since she could not with propriety leave the room. The young lady was not agreeable to her. Mme. Chevreuse had that pure honesty and good sense which looks with clear regards through a murky and dissimulating nature; for, after all, it is the deceitful who are most frequently duped.Miss Carthusen went flitting about the room, making herself quite at home. She selected a rosebud from a bouquet on the mantelpiece, and fastened it in madame’s gray hair with her fingers as light as snowflakes; she daintily abstracted the glasses the lady held, and put them on over her own large pale eyes. “Glasses always squeeze my eyelashes,” she said; “not that they are so very long, though, at least, they are not so long as Bettine von Arnim’s little goose-girl’s. Hers were two inches long; and the other girls laughed at them, so that she went away by herself and cried. Perhaps, beyond a certain point, eyelashes are like endurance, and cease to be a virtue. Who is it tells of a young lady whose long lashes gave her an overdressed appearance in the morning, so that one felt as though she ought to have a shorter set to come down to breakfast in?”Mrs. Chevreuse observed with interest the striking difference between the two men who sat near her talking, both, as any one could see, strong and fiery natures, yet so unlike in temper and manner. The priest was electrical and demonstrative; he uttered the thought that rose in his mind; he was a man to move the crowd, and carry all before him. The ardor of the other was the steady glow of the burning coal that may be hidden in darkness, and he shrank with fastidious pride and distrust from any revelation of the deeper feelings of his heart, and held in check even his passing emotions. He would have said, with that Marquis de Noailles, quoted by Liszt:Qu’il n’y a guère moyen de causer de quoi que ce soit, avec qui que ce soit; and, doubtless, he had found it so.F. Chevreuse had explained his wishes: their organist was disabled, and they had no one capable of taking his place. If Mr. Schöninger would consent to take charge of their singing, he would consider it a great favor.Mr. Schöninger had no engagement which would prevent his doing so, and it need not be looked on at all as a favor, but a mere matter of business. His profession was music.F. Chevreuse would insist on feeling obliged, although he would waive the pleasure of expressing that feeling.Mr. Schöninger intimated that it was perhaps desirable he should meet the choir an hour before the evening service.The priest had been about to make the same suggestion, and, since the time was so near, would be very happy to have his visitor take supper with him.The visitor thanked him, but had just dined.Nothing could be more properand to the point, nor more utterly stiff and frozen, than this dialogue was. F. Chevreuse shivered, and called little Rose—Rosebud, they named her—to him.The child went with a most captivating mingling of shyness and obedience in her air, walking a little from side to side, as a ship beats against the wind, making way in spite of fears. Her red cheeks growing redder, a tremor struggling with a smile on her small mouth, the intrepid little blossom allowed herself to be lifted to the stranger’s knees, her eyes seeking her friend’s for courage and strength.Mr. Schöninger smiled on his favorite with a tenderness which gave his face a new character, and watched curiously while the priest reassured and petted her till he won her attention to himself. His own experience and the traditions of his people had taught him to look on the Catholic Church as his most deadly antagonist; yet now, in spite of all, his heart relented and warmed a little to one of her ministers. He knew better than to take an apparent love for children as any proof of goodness—some of the worst persons he had ever known were excessively fond of them—yet it looked amiable in an honest person, and F. Chevreuse’s manner was particularly pleasant and winning.Embarrassed by the notice bestowed on her by all, yet, with a premature address, seeking to hide that embarrassment, the child glanced about the room in search of some diversion. Her eyes were caught by a picture of the Madonna.“Oh! who is that pretty lady with a wedding-ring round her head?” she cried out.“She,” said F. Chevreuse, “is a sweet and holy Jewish lady whom we all love.”The little girl glanced apprehensively at her friend—perhaps she had been told never to speak the word Jew in his presence—and saw a quick light flicker in his eyes. He was looking keenly at the priest, as if trying to fathom his intention. Was the man determined to win him in spite of his coldness? Was it his way of making proselytes, this fascinating delicacy and tenderness? He did not wish to like F. Chevreuse; yet what could he do in the presence of that radiant charity?“I think our business is done, sir,” he said, rising.The priest became matter-of-fact at once.“It is not necessary for me to make any suggestions to your good taste,” he said; “but I may be permitted to remark that our service is not merely æsthetic, but has a vital meaning, and I would like the music to be conducted earnestly.”“I shall make it as earnest as your composers with allow, sir,” the musician replied, with a slightly mocking smile.“My composers!” exclaimed the priest, laughing. “I repudiate them. Was it one of my composers who wrote the music of theStabat Mater, and set his voices pirouetting and waltzing through the woes of the Queen of sorrows? The world accuses Rossini of showing in that his contempt for Christianity. I would not say so much. I believe he thought of nothing but the rhythm and the vowel-sounds.”“And was it one of my composers,” the Jew retorted, “who set theKyrie EleisonI heard on passing your church last Sunday to an air as gay as any dance tune? If the words had been in English instead of Latin, it would have sounded blasphemous.”F. Chevreuse made a gesture ofresignation. “What can I do if the musicians are not so pious as the painters, if they will put the sound in the statue, and the sense in the pedestal? My only refuge is the Gregorian, which nobody but saints will tolerate. I am not a composer.”The call was at an end, and the visitors went.As soon as they were in the street, Miss Carthusen observed: “I notice that F. Chevreuse adopts Paracelsus’ method of cure: he anoints with fine ointment, not the wound, but the sword that made the wound.”She had been annoyed at the little attention paid to herself in contrast with the honor shown the priest’s mother, and wished to find out if Mr. Schöninger kept any resentment toward Mme. Chevreuse. He felt her inquisitive, unscrupulous eyes searching his face in sidelong glances.“The priest was very courteous to me,” he replied calmly. “And I should think that madame might be a very agreeable person to those she likes.”The young woman instantly launched into a glowing eulogy of the priest’s mother, till her listener bit his lips. He was not quite ready to be altogether charmed with the lady.“And,à proposof medicine,” said Miss Carthusen lightly, “it has been revealed to me to-day who the first homœopathist was.”“Is it a secret?”“It was Achilles,” she replied. “Do you not remember that nothing but Achilles’ spear healed the wound that itself had made?”As soon as they were gone, Mme. Chevreuse turned to her son. “Need I say how sorry I am?” she exclaimed.Tears were in her eyes. She was touched to the heart that, though he must have been deeply mortified, he should still not have failed for a moment to treat her with even more than ordinary courtesy and affection, as if to show their visitors that he did not dream of reproving her.“I knew that you felt worse about it than I did, dear mother,” he said, taking her hand. “And this will remind us both that it is not enough to be cautious in the expression of our thoughts. We must allow no uncharitable feeling to remain in our hearts.”“‘Murder will out,’” he added more lightly, seeing her moved. “And, after all, isn’t Mr. Schöninger a fine fellow?”Madame made no direct reply. She could not yet be enthusiastic about the Jew. “I think we should have supper,” she said, and went down to look after Jane.“O madame! did you see the look that man gave you?” cried the girl.“No matter about that,” the lady said calmly. “It was unfortunate that I should not have known he was coming. You must be careful to give some sign when visitors are coming in, and not introduce them in that noiseless way.”Madame held, with the Duke of Wellington, that it is not wise to accuse one’s self to a servant. The humility, instead of edifying, only provokes to insubordination.“I was coming down from the chambers, and met them at the street door, madame,” Jane made haste to say; “and I thought you would hear the steps.”“Very well, Jane; it’s no matter. I’m sure you do your duty faithfully. And now we will have supper.”

GRAPES AND THORNS.BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”CHAPTER II.A GLANCE FROM MR. SCHÖNINGER.Nonebut people of routine ever used their prayer-books while F. Chevreuse was reading or singing Mass, and it was seldom that even such people used them the first time they heard him; for it was not enough that those who assisted should unite their intention with that of the priest, and then pray their own prayers, recalled now and then to the altar by the sound of the bell: their whole attention was riveted there from the first.That penetrating voice, which enunciated every word with such exquisite clearness, speaking rapidly only because so earnest, was heard throughout the church, and its vivid emphasis gave new life to every prayer of the service. When F. Chevreuse saidDominus vobiscum!one replied as a matter of course—would as soon, indeed, have neglected to answer his face-to-face greeting on the street as this from the altar; theOrate, fratres, compelled the listener to pray; and, at theDomine, non sum dignus, one felt confounded and abashed.Was it, then, you asked yourself, the first time this priest had said Mass, that he should stand so like a man who sees a vision? No; F. Chevreuse had been fifteen years a priest. Had he, perhaps, an intellect more high than the ordinary, or a superior sanctity? No, again; though a clearer mind or a nobler Christian soul one would scarcely wish to see. The peculiarity lay chiefly, we should guess, in a large, impassioned, and generous heart, which, like a strong fountain for ever tossing up its freshening tide, overflowed his being, and made even the driest facts bud and blossom perennially. In that heart, nothing worthy of life ever faded or grew old. Its possessions were dowered with the freshness of immortal youth.Still, these gifts might have been partially ineffectual if nature had not added to them a sanguine temperament, and the priceless blessing of a body capable of enduring severe and prolonged labor. F. Chevreuse was spared that misery of a bright intelligence and an active will for ever pent and thwarted by physical incompetence, the soul by its nature constantly compelled to issue mandates to the body, which the body by its weakness is as inevitably compelled to disobey. In that wide brain of his, thoughts had ample elbow-room, and could range themselves without crowding or confusion; and the broad shoulders and deep chest showed with what full breathing the flame of life was fanned. His mind was always working, yet there was no sign of a feverish head; the eyes were steady, and the close-cut gray hair grew so thick as to form a crown.For the rest, let his life speak. We respect the privacy of such a soul; and, though we would fain show him real and admirable, we sketch F. Chevreuse with a shy pencil.The church of S. John was a new and unfinished one on Church Street. This street ran east and west, parallel with the Cocheco, and half-way up the South Hill, which here sloped so abruptly that the buildings on the lower side had one more story at the rear than in front, and those on the upper side one more story in front than at the rear. In consequence of this deceptive appearance, those who liked to put the best foot forward preferred to live on the upper side, though it doomed them to a north light in their houses, while those who thought more of comfort than of display chose the other side with a southward frontage.The church was set back so as to leave a square in front, and its entrance was but four or five steps above the street; but at the back a large and well-lighted basement was visible. The priest’s house stood close to the street, on the eastern side of this square, and so near that between the back corner of its main part and the front corner of the church there was scarcely space for two persons to stand abreast. This narrow passage, screened by a yard or so of iron railing, gave access to a long flight of stairs that led to the basements of the church and of the house.Seen from the front, this house was a little, melancholy, rain-streaked, wooden cottage, which might be regarded as a blot upon the grandeur of the church, or an admirable foil for it, as one had a mind to think. The door opened almost on the sidewalk, and beside the door were two dismal windows with the curtains down. In the space above, another curtained window was set between the two sharp slants of the roof. On the side opposite the church, where a lane ran down to the next street, the prospect was more cheering. You saw there an L as wide as the main building, though not so deep, and projecting from it so as to give another street door at the end of a veranda, and allow space for two windows at the rear of the house. This L was Mrs. Chevreuse’s peculiar domain, as the house was that of the priest. Her sitting-room and bedroom were here; and no one acquainted with the customs of the place ever came to the veranda door unless they could claim an intimate friendship with the priest’s mother.The parlor with the two dismal front windows beside the entrance was used as a reception-room. Back of that was the priest’s private sitting-room, with two windows looking out on the veranda, and one window commanding the basement entrance of the church, the pleasant green space around it, and the flight of stairs that led up to the street. F. Chevreuse’s arm-chair and writing-table always stood in this window, and behind them was a door leading into a little side-room containing a strong desk where he kept papers and money, and a sofa on which he took an occasional nap.Up-stairs were two sleeping-rooms; down-stairs, as the hill sloped, the kitchen, dining-room, and the two rooms occupied by Jane, the cook, and Andrew, the priest’s man. There was space enough in the house, and it had the charm of irregularity; but from the street, as we have said, it was a melancholy-looking structure. F. Chevreuse, however, could not have been better pleased with it had it been a palace. Within, all was comfort and love for him; and he probably never looked at the outside. The new church and his people engrossed his thoughts.Mrs. Chevreuse was not so indifferent. “It would not look well for me to go up on a ladder, and paint the outsidewalls,” she said to herself, her only confidant in such matters; “but, if it could be turned inside-out for one day, I would quickly have it looking less like an urchin with a soiled face.”No one could doubt this assertion after having seen the interior of this castle of the rueful countenance. There she could go up on a ladder without shocking any one, and from basement to attic the place was as fresh as a rose. But the nicety was never intrusive. This lady’s house-keeping perspective was admirably arranged, and her point of view the right one. Cleanliness and order dwelt with her, not as tyrants, but as good fairies who were visible only when looked for. If you should chance to think of it, you would observe that everything which should be polished shone like a mirror; that the white was immaculate, the windows clear, and the furniture well-placed. You might recollect that the door was never opened for you by an untidy house-maid, and that no odors from the kitchen ever saluted your nostrils on entering, though a bouquet on the stair-post sometimes breathed a fragrant welcome.Now, housekeepers know that the observance of all these little details of order and good taste involves a great deal of care and labor; but they sometimes forget that their exquisiteménageloses its principal charm when the care and labor are made manifest. It cannot be denied that the temptation is strong now and then to let Cæsar know by what pains we produce these apparently simple results, which he takes as a matter of course; but, when the temptation is yielded to, the results cease to be entirely pleasing. The unhappy man becomes afraid to walk on our carpets, to touch our door-knobs, to sit in our chairs, eat eggs with our spoons, lay his odious pipe on our best table-cover, or tie the curtains into a knot. The touching confidence with which he was wont to ask that an elaborate dinner might be prepared for him in fifteen minutes vanishes from his face like a rainbow tint that leaves the cloud behind. “A cold lunch will do,” he tells you resignedly, and you detect incipient dyspepsia in his countenance. The free motions that seemed to feel infinite space about them are no more. The anxious hero pulls his toga about him in the most undignified and ungraceful manner, lest it should upset a flower-pot or a chair. In fine, the tormenting gadfly of our neatness stings him up and down his days, till he would fain seek refuge and rest in disorder.Mother Chevreuse knew all this perfectly, and behaved herself in so heroic a manner that her son never suspected, what was quite true, that the unnecessary steps he caused her might make several miles a day.One morning after early Mass, toward the last of May, she seated herself in the arm-chair by the window, and watched for the priest to come in from the church. This was a part of her daily programme, and the only time of day she ever occupied what she called his throne. After his breakfast, they did not meet, save incidentally, till supper-time; for, except when they had company, F. Chevreuse dined alone. The mother had perceived that, when they dined together, there had been a struggle between the sense of duty and courtesy which made him wish to entertain her, and the abstraction he naturally felt in the midst of the cares and labors of the day, and, ever on the watch lest she should in any way intrude on his vocation, had herself made this arrangement. The fact that he did not oppose itwas a sufficient proof that it was agreeable to him.This mother was the softer type of her son, as though what you would carve in granite you should first mould in wax. There was the same compact form, telling of health, strength, and activity, the same clear eyes, the same thick gray hair crowning a forehead more wide than high. Their expressions differed as their circumstances did; cheerfulness and good sense were common to both; but, where the priest was authoritative, the woman was dignified.Presently her face brightened, for the fold of a black robe showed some one standing just inside the chapel door, and the next moment F. Chevreuse appeared, his hands clasped behind him, his face bent thoughtfully downward. Seeing him thus for the first time, you are surprised to find him only medium height. At the altar, he had appeared tall. You might wonder, too, what great beauty his admirers found in him. But scarcely had the doubt formed itself in your mind, before it was triumphantly answered. The priest’s first step was into a shadow, his second into sunlight; and, as that light smote him, he lifted his head quickly, and a smile broke over his face. Wheeling about, he fronted the east. The river-courses had hollowed out a deep ravine between him and the sunrise, and the tide of glory flowed in and filled that from rim to rim, and curled over the green hills like wine-froth over a beaker. He stood gazing, smiling and undazzled, his face illuminated from within as from without. It might be said of F. Chevreuse, as it was of William Blake, that, when the sun rose “he did not see a round, fiery disk somewhat like a guinea, but an innumerable company of the heavenly hosts crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!’”The mother watched, but did not interrupt him. She knew well that such moments were fruitful, and that he was storing away in his mind the precious vintage of that spring morning to bring it forth again at some future time fragrant with the bouquet of a spiritual significance. “Glimpses of God,” she called such moods.He threw his head back, and, with a swift glance, took in the whole scene; the fleckless blue overhead, the closely gathered city beneath, the lights and shades that played in the dewy greensward at his feet, and, turning about, his mother’s loving face—a fit climax for the morning.“Bon jour, Mère Chevreuse!” he called out, touching hisbarrette.As he disappeared into the house, Mrs. Chevreuse went into her own sitting-room, which opened from his, and gave a last glance at the table prepared for his breakfast. The preparation was not elaborate. A little stand by the eastern window held a pitcher of milk, a bowl and spoon, and a napkin; and Jane, following the priest up-stairs, added a dish of oatmeal pudding.F. Chevreuse walked briskly through the entry, and threw the street door wide open, then came back singing, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and the King of glory shall come in!” and continued, as he entered the room, his voice hardly settled from song to speech, “What created things are more like the King of glory than light and air? They are as his glance and his breath.”The look that met his was sympathizing, but the words that replied were scarcely an answer to his question. “Your breakfast is cooling, F. Chevreuse,” she said.He took no heed, but, clasping his hands behind him, walked to and frowith a step that showed flying would have been the more congenial motion.“Mother,” he exclaimed, “the mysteries of human nature are as inscrutable as the mysteries of God. Would the angels believe, if they had not seen, that a Mass has been said this morning here in the midst of a crowded city, with only a score or so of persons to assist? Why was not the church thronged with worshippers, and thousands pressing outside to kiss the foundation-stones? When I turned with theEcce Agnus Dei, why did not all present fall with their faces to the floor? And when Miss Honora Pembroke walked away from the communion-railing, why did not every one look at her with wonder and admiration?—the woman who bore her God in her bosom! And just now, when the sun rose”—he stopped and looked at his mother with a combative air—“why did not the people look up and hail it as the signet of the Almighty?”Mother Chevreuse smiled pleasantly. She was used to being set up as a target for these unanswerable questions, especially in the morning, at which time the priest was likely to be, as Jane expressed it, “rather high in his mind.”“If you could take your breakfast, my son,” she suggested.“Breakfast!” He glanced with a look of aversion at the table that held his frugal meal, considered a moment, recognized the propriety of its existence, finally seated himself in his place, and began to eat with a very good appetite. “You were quite right, my lady,” he remarked; “the sunshine was drinking my milk all up. What thirsty creatures they are, those beams!”Let it not be supposed that F. Chevreuse was so ascetical as never to eat except when urged to do so. On the contrary, he took good care to keep up the health and strength necessary for the performance of his multiform duties as the only priest in a large parish, and he used a wise discrimination in allowing others to fast. “Some fasting is almost as bad as feasting,” he used to say. “Besides injuring the health, it clogs the soul. You look down upon eating when you have dined moderately; but, when you have fasted immoderately, the idea of dinner is elevated till it becomes a constellation. I do not wish to starve, till, when I kneel down and raise my eyes, I can think of nothing but roast beef. Asceticism is not an end, but a means.”“Mother,” he said presently, laying down his spoon, “why is it that the oatmeal and milk I get at home are better than that I find anywhere else?”“Children always think the food they get at home better than what they get abroad,” she replied tranquilly.Why should she tell him that what he called milk was cream, and that the making of that “stirabout” was a fine-art, which had been taught Jane line upon line, and precept upon precept, till every grain dropped according to rule, and the motion of the pudding spoon was as exact as a sonnet? Instead of being pleased, he would have been disturbed to know that so much pains had been taken for him.“I like no earthly comfort that has cost any one much trouble or pain,” he would say. Like most persons who have been spared the petty cares of life, he did not know that in this discordant world there is no earthly comfort to any one which is not a pain to some other.Breakfast over, the priest went promptly about his business; and Mrs. Chevreuse, shutting the doorbetween their rooms, brought her work-basket to the stand where the tray had been, and seated herself to mend a rent in asoutane.It was a pleasant room, with its one window toward the church, and an opposite one looking over the city and the distant hills, and most enticingly comfortable, with deep chairs, convenient tables, and tiny stands always within reach, and an open fireplace which was seldom, save at mid-summer, without its little glimmer of fire at some time of day. And even then, if the day was chilly or overcast, the fact that it was mid-summer did not prevent the kindling of Mother Chevreuse’s beltane flame. From this room and the bedroom behind it could be heard on still nights the dashing of the Cocheco among its rocks.Mrs. Chevreuse worked and thought. The sunbeams sparkled on the scissors, needles, bodkins, and whatever bright thing it could find in her work-basket, on her eyeglasses and thimble, on the smooth-worn gold of her wedding-ring, and the tiny needle weaving deftly to and fro in an almost invisible darn, of which the lady was not a little proud. Her mind wove, too; not those flimsy fancies of youth so like spider’s webs upon the grass, that glitter only when the morning dew is on them: the threads of her dream-tapestry ended in heaven, though begun on earth, and their severance could only change hope into fruition. And all the time, while hand and heart slipped to and fro, the lady was aware of everything that went on in the house. She heard Andrew come into the next room with the morning mail, heard the sound of voices while he received his orders for the day, heard him go clumping down-stairs, and out through the kitchen into the chapel. Presently the clumping resounded outside, and, glancing across the room, she saw the old man standing on the basement stairs, his head on a level with her window, looking at her across the space that intervened, and gesticulating, with a twinkling candlestick in each hand.Mother Chevreuse, still holding her work, went and threw the sash up.“I think, madame, begging your pardon, that I can clean these just as well as you can,” says Andrew, with a very positive nod and a little shake that set all the glass drops twinkling and tinkling.“Do you, Andrew?” returned madame pleasantly. “Very well, then, you can clean them, and save me the trouble. But don’t forget to rub all the whiting out of the creases.”Andrew changed countenance as he turned slowly about to descend the stairs. Mrs. Chevreuse had been gradually taking the care of the altar from his rather careless hands, and this had been his diplomatic way of escaping the candlestick cleaning of that day without asking her to do it. He hobbled down-stairs again discomfited, and the lady went smiling back to her work.“It is all very well for Sharp’s rifles,” she remarked, threading her needle; “but I don’t like being fired at in that spiral manner.”Still weaving again with hand and heart, she heard Jane going about, like a neat household machine doing everything in its exact time and place, severe on interruption, merciless on mud or dust, ever ready to have a skirmish on these grounds with Andrew; she heard the rattle of paper from the next room, as letters and parcels were opened, the scratching of F. Chevreuse’s quill as he wrote answers to one or two correspondents, or made up accounts, and the little tap with which he pressed the stamp upon the letters.How peaceful and sweet her life was, all she loved within reach, all she hoped for so sure! She breathed a sigh of thanksgiving, then dropped her work and listened; for the priest was preparing to go out. Every morning was spent by him in collecting for his church. He had found in Crichton a thousand or more practical Catholics, with one shabby old chapel to worship in, and nearly as many nominal Catholics who did not worship at all; and in three years, with scarcely any capital to begin with besides faith, he had raised and nearly finished a large and beautiful church, and gathered into it the greater part of the wanderers.“Be prudent, my son!” the mother had warned him when he began what seemed so venturesome an enterprise.“I am so,” he replied, with decision. “It would be the height of imprudence to leave these people any longer straying like lost sheep. When the Master of the universe commands that a house be built for him, is it for me to fear he will not be able to pay for it?”She said no more. Mme. Chevreuse always remembered to distinguish between the son and the priest, and was never more proud of her motherhood than when her natural authority was confronted by the supernatural authority of her child. But she always sighed when he started on a collecting-tour, for his faith had to be supplemented by hard work, and often he came back worn with fatigue, and depressed by the sights of poverty, sorrow, and sin he had witnessed.All had gone well with the church, however—so well that a new enterprise had been added, and a convent school was just making its small beginning in Crichton.“Is madame visible?” asked a voice smothered against the door.“Entrez!” she answered gaily; and the priest put his head in.“Say a little prayer to S. Joseph for F. Chevreuse to-day,” he said; “for he is collecting for the great note.”“Oh!” She looked anxiously at him, and met a reassuring smile in return.“Never fear, mother!” he said cheerfully. “Do not all the houses and lands belong to God?”“Certainly!” she answered, but sighed to herself as he went away: “it is very true they all belong to God, but I’m afraid the devil has some very heavy mortgages on them.”Later in the day, Miss Ferrier called for Mrs. Chevreuse to go out and visit the sisters at the new convent. “I have taken all I could think of this morning,” she said, and enumerated various useful articles. “I suppose they want nearly everything.”Mrs. Chevreuse commended her liberality. “But I am glad you did not think of cordage,” she added; “for that is the very thing I did remember.”She opened a large basket, and laughingly displayed a collection of ropes and cords varying from coils of clothes-line and curtain-cord to balls of fine pink twine. “Jane’s clothes-line gave out yesterday,” she said, “and that made me think of this.”Miss Ferrier gave a little shiver and shrug. “It is very nice and useful, I know; but ropes always remind me of hanging.”“Naturally,” returned the lady, tying on her bonnet: “that is their vocation.”“But hanging is such a dreadful punishment!” And the young woman shivered again.“Why, my pictures seem to enjoyit,” Mrs. Chevreuse replied, persistently cheerful.“Now, really, madame—““Now, really, mademoiselle,” was the laughing interruption, “what has put your thoughts on such a track this morning? If you want my opinion on the subject, I cannot give it, for I have none. All I can say is that, if I thought any one were destined to kill me, I would instantly write and sign a petition for his pardon, and leave it to be presented to the governor and council at the proper time. Think of something pleasant. I am ready now. We will go out through the house.”She locked the veranda door, and put the key in her pocket. “I have only to give Jane an order. Jane!” she called, leaning out the window.A head appeared from the kitchen window beneath, and the mistress gave her order down the outside of the house. “It saves so much going up and down stairs for two old women,” she explained. “Now, my dear.”They went into the priest’s sitting-room, and again the door was locked behind them, and the key this time hung on a nail over the writing-table. “Wait a moment,” said madame then, and began picking up bits of paper scattered about the room. The priest had torn up a letter, and absently dropped the fragments on the carpet instead of into the waste-basket, and a breeze had been playing with them.“How provoking men are,” remarked Miss Ferrier, stooping for a fragment which a puff of air instantly caught away from her.“Are they?” asked Mrs. Chevreuse quietly. “I do not know, I have so little to do with them. Most people are provoking sometimes, I dare say.”Having made a second ineffectual dive for the strip of paper, the young woman had not patience enough left to bear so cool an evasion. “F. Chevreuse deserves a scolding for strewing this about,” she said.The mother glanced at her with that sort of surprise which is more disconcerting than anger. Miss Ferrier blushed, but would not be so silenced.“If you should oblige him to pick them up once,” she continued, “that would cure him.”“Oblige him!” repeated the mother with a more emphasized coldness. “I never oblige F. Chevreuse to do anything. I should not dream of calling his attention to such a trifle. He has higher affairs on his mind. Now we will go.”Their drive took them through the town by its longest avenue, Main Street, which followed the Saranac half-way to its source. School children in Crichton looked on Main Street as their meridian of longitude, and were under the impression that it reached from pole to pole. It crossed the Cocheco by the central one of three parallel bridges, climbed straight up the steep North Height, and stretched out into the country. The convent grounds were on the west bank of the Saranac, twenty acres of rough land, roughly enclosed, with an old tumble-down house that had been a tavern in the early days of Crichton. It was a desolate-looking place, with not a tree nor flower to be seen, but needed only time and labor to become a little Eden.In the eyes of Sister Cecilia it was even now an Eden. Her ardent and generous nature, made still brighter by a beautiful Christian enthusiasm, saw in advance the blossom and fruit of unplanted trees, and seeds yet in the paper. Full of delight to her was all this planning and labor.She was out-doors when the carriage drove up, in earnest consultation with two workmen, directing the laying out of the kitchen-garden, and, recognizing her visitors, hastened toward them with a cordial welcome. Sister Cecilia was a little over forty years of age, tall and graceful, and had one of those sunny faces that show heaven is already begun in the heart. When she smiled, the sparkling of her deep-blue eyes betrayed mirth and humor.“Dread the labor?” she exclaimed, in answer to a question from Miss Ferrier. “Indeed not! I was so charmed with the idea of coming to this wild place that I had a scruple about it, and was almost afraid I ought not to be indulged. It is always delightful to begin at the beginning, and see the effect of your work.”She led them about the place and told her plans. Here a grove was to be planted, there the path would wind, vines would be trained against this stone wall.“But I don’t see any stone wall,” protested Miss Ferrier.Sister Cecilia laughed. “I see it distinctly, and so will you next year. There are piles of stones on the land which will save us a good deal of money; and we are very likely to have some work done for nothing. Do you know how kind the laborers are to us? Twenty men have offered to do each a day’s work in our garden free of charge. Those are two of them. Now, here we are going to have a large arbor covered with honeysuckle and roses. It must be closed on the east side, because there will be a river-road outside the wall some day, and we should be visible from it. But the south side will be all open, so we can sit under the roses and look down that beautiful river and over all the city. You see the knoll was made on purpose for an arbor.”As they went into the house, a slender shape glided past in the dusk of the further entry. The light from a roof window, shining down the stairs, revealed a face like a lily drooped a little sidewise, a wealth of brown hair gathered back, and a sweet, shy smile. It was as though some one had carried a lighted waxen taper through the shadows where she disappeared.“It is Anita!” exclaimed Miss Ferrier, stopping on the threshold of the parlor. “Why did she not come to us?”“That dear Anita!” said the sister. “She has a piano lesson to give at this hour, and would not dream of turning aside from the shortest road to the music-room. If you were her own mother, Mme. Chevreuse, she would not come to you without permission. Yet such a tender, loving creature I never knew before. Obedience is the law of her life. Next spring she will begin her novitiate.”The house was looked over, the other sisters seen, and the offerings brought them duly presented and acknowledged; then the two ladies started for home.Miss Ferrier was rather silent when they were alone. She had not forgotten the reproof of the morning, and she felt aggrieved by it. Mrs. Chevreuse had known that she was but jesting, and might have been a little less touchy, she thought. What was the matter that almost every one was finding fault with her lately? Her mother accused her of being cross and captious, her lover found her exacting, and Mrs. Gerald had thought her too assuming on one occasion, and yet all she was conscious of was a blind feeling of loss—some such sense as deep-buried roots may have when the sky grows darkover the tree above. Little things that once would have passed by like the idle wind now had power to make her shrink, as the lightest touch will hurt a sore; and trifles that had once given her pleasure now fell dead and flat. The time had been when the mere driving through the city in her showy carriage had elated her, when she had sat in delighted consciousness of the satin cushions, the glittering harness and wheels, and even of the band on the coachman’s hat and the capes that fluttered from his shoulders. Now they sometimes gave her a feeling of weary disgust, and she assured herself that she knew not why. If any suspicion glanced across her mind that a worm was eating into the very centre of her rose of life, and the outer petals withered merely because the heart was withering, she shut her eyes to it, and kept seeking here and there for comfort, but found none. Honora was the only person who ever really soothed her; and, for some reason, or for no reason, even Honora’s soothing now and then held a sting that was keenly felt.“Is it possible she is resenting my reproof?” thought Mrs. Chevreuse, and exerted herself to be pleasant and friendly, but without much success. Miss Ferrier’s affected gaiety was gone, and she had no disposition to resume it.“She is not so good-tempered as I believed,” the priest’s mother thought when they parted, with one of those unjust judgments which the good form quite as often as the bad.Miss Ferrier drove on homeward. She had no need to tell the coachman which way to drive, nor how, for he knew perfectly well that he was to make his horses prance slowly through Bank Street, where, in a certain insurance office up one flight of a granite building, Mr. Lawrence Gerald bit his nails and fumed over a clerk’s desk, and half attended to his business while inwardly protesting against what he called his misfortunes. Perhaps his desk faced the window, or maybe his companions were good enough to call his attention to it; for it seldom happened that Miss Ferrier, glancing up, did not see him waiting to bow to her. He did not love the girl, but he felt a trivial pride in contemplating the evidences of that wealth which was one day to be his unless he should change his mind. He sometimes admitted the possibility of the latter alternative.To-day he was not at the window; but his lady-love had hardly time to be conscious of disappointment, when she saw him lounging in the doorway down-stairs. He came listlessly out as the carriage drew up, and at the same moment Miss Lily Carthusen appeared from a shop near by, and joined them. This young lady took a good deal of exercise in the open air, and might be met almost any time, and always with the latest news to tell.“I congratulate you both,” she said, in her sprightliest manner. “That dreadful organist of yours has put his wrist out of joint, and cannot play again for a month or two. Isn’t it delightful?” She laughed elfishly. “Haven’t you heard of it? Oh! yes; it is true. It happened this morning when he came down the dark stairway in his boarding-house. He tumbled against the dear old balusters, and put his wrist out. I never before knew the good of dark stairways.”“Why, Lily! aren’t you ashamed?” remonstrated Miss Ferrier, smiling faintly.“Do you think I ought to be ashamed?” inquired Miss Lily, withan ingenuous expression in her large, light-blue eyes.“Yes; I do,” replied Miss Ferrier, much edified.“Well, then, I won’t,” was the satisfactory conclusion.“I am sorry for Mr. Glover,” Miss Ferrier remarked gravely.“Now, my dear mademoiselle, please don’t be so crushingly good!” cried the other. “You know perfectly well that he plays execrably, and spoils the singing of your beautiful choir; and you know that you would be perfectly delighted if F. Chevreuse would pension him off. Don’t try to look grieved, for you can’t.”“I don’t pretend to be a saint, Miss Carthusen,” said Annette, dropping her eyes.“And I don’t pretend to be a sinner,” was the mocking retort.Mr. Gerald smiled at this little duel, as men are wont to smile at such scenes. It did not hurt him, and it did amuse him.“But the best part of the business is that F. Chevreuse has asked Mr. Schöninger to play in his stead,” pursued the news-bringer. “He has written a note requesting him to call there this evening.”Miss Ferrier drew her shawl about her, and leaned back against the cushions. She had an air of dismissing the subject and the company which, not being either rude or affected, was so near being stately that Mr. Gerald was pleased with it, and, to reward her, begged an invitation to lunch.“I had just come out for my daily sandwich,” he said; “but if you will take pity on me—“She smilingly made room for him by her side, and drove off full of delight.The afternoon waned, and, as evening approached, Mrs. Chevreuse sat in her own room again, waiting for the priest to come home. She had visited her sick and poor, looked to her household affairs, stepped into the church to arrange some fresh flowers, and see that the candlesticks shone with spotless brilliancy, and was now trying to interest herself in a book while she waited. But it was hard to fix her attention; it constantly wandered from the page. Jane had heard and told her of the accident to their organist, and the rumor that Mr. Schöninger was to take his place; but had not told the news by any means with the glee of a Lily Carthusen. On the contrary, it had seemed to her mind an almost incredible horror that a Jew was to take any part in a service performed before the altar whereon the Lord of heaven was enthroned. To Jane’s mind, every Jew was a Judas. That he could be moral, that he could adore his Creator and pray earnestly for forgiveness of his sins, she did not for an instant believe. The worst criminal, if nominally a Catholic, was in her eyes infinitely preferable to the best Jew in the world.“Andrew declared it was so, madame, and that he carried a note to that Mr. Schöninger before dinner,” she said, concluding her lamentation; “but nothing will make me believe it till I hear F. Chevreuse say so with his own mouth.”“Oh! well, don’t distress yourself about it, Jane,” her mistress replied soothingly. “Perhaps it is a mistake; but, if it is not, you may be sure that F. Chevreuse knows best. He always has good reasons for what he does. Besides, we must be charitable. Who knows but the services of the church and our prayers might, by the blessing of God, convert this man.”“Convert a rattlesnake!” criedJane, too much excited to be respectful.But Mrs. Chevreuse, though she had spoken soothingly to her subordinate, was not herself altogether satisfied. She was a woman of large mind and heart; yet, if any one people in the world came last in her regard, it was the Jewish people. Moreover, she had seen Mr. Schöninger but once, and then at an unfortunate moment when something had occurred to draw that strange blank look over his face. The impression left on her mind was an unpleasant one that there was something dark and secret in the man.“Of course it will all be right,” she said to herself, annoyed that she should feel disturbed for such a cause. “I am foolish to think of it.”The street door was opened and left wide, after F. Chevreuse’s fashion, and she heard his quick, light step in the entry. Dropping her book, she smiled involuntarily at the sound. How sweet to a woman is this nightly coming home of father, son, or husband! He came in, went to the inner room, and opened and closed his desk, then returned to the sitting-room, threw up the corner window, from which he could see into her apartment, and seated himself in his arm-chair, leaning forward as he did so to bow a smiling recognition across to her. His day’s work was as nearly over as it could be. In the morning, he must go out to meet his duties; in the evening, they must seek him. The hour for their social life had come; and though subject to constant interruptions, so that scarcely ten minutes at a time were left them for confidential intercourse, they were free to snatch what they could get.Mrs. Chevreuse put her book away, and opened the door between the two sitting-rooms. “Father,” she said immediately, “is it true that you are going to have that Jew play the organ at S. John’s?”The priest rose hastily, and his mother’s foot was arrested on the threshold; for just opposite her, coming into the room from the entry, was Miss Lily Carthusen, leading a little girl by the hand, and followed by “that Jew”; while, in wrathful perspective, like a thunder-head on the horizon, gloomed the face of Jane, the servant-woman.The silence was only for the space of a lightning-flash, and the flash was not wanting; it shot across the room from a pair of eyes that looked as though they might sear to ashes what they gazed upon in anger. The next moment, the eyes drooped, and their owner was bowing to F. Chevreuse.Miss Carthusen was perfectly self-possessed and voluble, seeming to have heard nothing. “This little wilful girl would come with Mr. Schöninger, madame,” she said; “and, as he is not going back, I was obliged to come and see her home again safely.”The truth was that Miss Lily, who boarded in the same house with the gentleman, had encouraged the child to come, in order that she might accompany her.F. Chevreuse had blushed slightly but he showed no other embarrassment. It was the first time that Mr. Schöninger had entered his house, and he welcomed him with a more marked cordiality, perhaps, on account of the unfortunate speech which had greeted his coming.“You are welcome, sir! I thank you for taking the trouble to come to me. It was my place to call on you, but my engagements left me no time. Allow me to present you to my mother, Mme. Chevreuse.”“My mother” had probably never been placed in so disagreeable a position,but her behavior was admirable. The man she had involuntarily insulted was forced to admit that nothing could be more perfect than the respectful courtesy of her salutation, which maintained with dignified sincerity the distance she really felt, while it expressed her regret at having intruded that feeling on him.“Yet they talk of charity!” he thought; and the lady did not miss a slight curl of the lip which was not hidden by his profound obeisance.The introduction over, she left Mr. Schöninger to the priest, and took refuge with his little friend, since she could not with propriety leave the room. The young lady was not agreeable to her. Mme. Chevreuse had that pure honesty and good sense which looks with clear regards through a murky and dissimulating nature; for, after all, it is the deceitful who are most frequently duped.Miss Carthusen went flitting about the room, making herself quite at home. She selected a rosebud from a bouquet on the mantelpiece, and fastened it in madame’s gray hair with her fingers as light as snowflakes; she daintily abstracted the glasses the lady held, and put them on over her own large pale eyes. “Glasses always squeeze my eyelashes,” she said; “not that they are so very long, though, at least, they are not so long as Bettine von Arnim’s little goose-girl’s. Hers were two inches long; and the other girls laughed at them, so that she went away by herself and cried. Perhaps, beyond a certain point, eyelashes are like endurance, and cease to be a virtue. Who is it tells of a young lady whose long lashes gave her an overdressed appearance in the morning, so that one felt as though she ought to have a shorter set to come down to breakfast in?”Mrs. Chevreuse observed with interest the striking difference between the two men who sat near her talking, both, as any one could see, strong and fiery natures, yet so unlike in temper and manner. The priest was electrical and demonstrative; he uttered the thought that rose in his mind; he was a man to move the crowd, and carry all before him. The ardor of the other was the steady glow of the burning coal that may be hidden in darkness, and he shrank with fastidious pride and distrust from any revelation of the deeper feelings of his heart, and held in check even his passing emotions. He would have said, with that Marquis de Noailles, quoted by Liszt:Qu’il n’y a guère moyen de causer de quoi que ce soit, avec qui que ce soit; and, doubtless, he had found it so.F. Chevreuse had explained his wishes: their organist was disabled, and they had no one capable of taking his place. If Mr. Schöninger would consent to take charge of their singing, he would consider it a great favor.Mr. Schöninger had no engagement which would prevent his doing so, and it need not be looked on at all as a favor, but a mere matter of business. His profession was music.F. Chevreuse would insist on feeling obliged, although he would waive the pleasure of expressing that feeling.Mr. Schöninger intimated that it was perhaps desirable he should meet the choir an hour before the evening service.The priest had been about to make the same suggestion, and, since the time was so near, would be very happy to have his visitor take supper with him.The visitor thanked him, but had just dined.Nothing could be more properand to the point, nor more utterly stiff and frozen, than this dialogue was. F. Chevreuse shivered, and called little Rose—Rosebud, they named her—to him.The child went with a most captivating mingling of shyness and obedience in her air, walking a little from side to side, as a ship beats against the wind, making way in spite of fears. Her red cheeks growing redder, a tremor struggling with a smile on her small mouth, the intrepid little blossom allowed herself to be lifted to the stranger’s knees, her eyes seeking her friend’s for courage and strength.Mr. Schöninger smiled on his favorite with a tenderness which gave his face a new character, and watched curiously while the priest reassured and petted her till he won her attention to himself. His own experience and the traditions of his people had taught him to look on the Catholic Church as his most deadly antagonist; yet now, in spite of all, his heart relented and warmed a little to one of her ministers. He knew better than to take an apparent love for children as any proof of goodness—some of the worst persons he had ever known were excessively fond of them—yet it looked amiable in an honest person, and F. Chevreuse’s manner was particularly pleasant and winning.Embarrassed by the notice bestowed on her by all, yet, with a premature address, seeking to hide that embarrassment, the child glanced about the room in search of some diversion. Her eyes were caught by a picture of the Madonna.“Oh! who is that pretty lady with a wedding-ring round her head?” she cried out.“She,” said F. Chevreuse, “is a sweet and holy Jewish lady whom we all love.”The little girl glanced apprehensively at her friend—perhaps she had been told never to speak the word Jew in his presence—and saw a quick light flicker in his eyes. He was looking keenly at the priest, as if trying to fathom his intention. Was the man determined to win him in spite of his coldness? Was it his way of making proselytes, this fascinating delicacy and tenderness? He did not wish to like F. Chevreuse; yet what could he do in the presence of that radiant charity?“I think our business is done, sir,” he said, rising.The priest became matter-of-fact at once.“It is not necessary for me to make any suggestions to your good taste,” he said; “but I may be permitted to remark that our service is not merely æsthetic, but has a vital meaning, and I would like the music to be conducted earnestly.”“I shall make it as earnest as your composers with allow, sir,” the musician replied, with a slightly mocking smile.“My composers!” exclaimed the priest, laughing. “I repudiate them. Was it one of my composers who wrote the music of theStabat Mater, and set his voices pirouetting and waltzing through the woes of the Queen of sorrows? The world accuses Rossini of showing in that his contempt for Christianity. I would not say so much. I believe he thought of nothing but the rhythm and the vowel-sounds.”“And was it one of my composers,” the Jew retorted, “who set theKyrie EleisonI heard on passing your church last Sunday to an air as gay as any dance tune? If the words had been in English instead of Latin, it would have sounded blasphemous.”F. Chevreuse made a gesture ofresignation. “What can I do if the musicians are not so pious as the painters, if they will put the sound in the statue, and the sense in the pedestal? My only refuge is the Gregorian, which nobody but saints will tolerate. I am not a composer.”The call was at an end, and the visitors went.As soon as they were in the street, Miss Carthusen observed: “I notice that F. Chevreuse adopts Paracelsus’ method of cure: he anoints with fine ointment, not the wound, but the sword that made the wound.”She had been annoyed at the little attention paid to herself in contrast with the honor shown the priest’s mother, and wished to find out if Mr. Schöninger kept any resentment toward Mme. Chevreuse. He felt her inquisitive, unscrupulous eyes searching his face in sidelong glances.“The priest was very courteous to me,” he replied calmly. “And I should think that madame might be a very agreeable person to those she likes.”The young woman instantly launched into a glowing eulogy of the priest’s mother, till her listener bit his lips. He was not quite ready to be altogether charmed with the lady.“And,à proposof medicine,” said Miss Carthusen lightly, “it has been revealed to me to-day who the first homœopathist was.”“Is it a secret?”“It was Achilles,” she replied. “Do you not remember that nothing but Achilles’ spear healed the wound that itself had made?”As soon as they were gone, Mme. Chevreuse turned to her son. “Need I say how sorry I am?” she exclaimed.Tears were in her eyes. She was touched to the heart that, though he must have been deeply mortified, he should still not have failed for a moment to treat her with even more than ordinary courtesy and affection, as if to show their visitors that he did not dream of reproving her.“I knew that you felt worse about it than I did, dear mother,” he said, taking her hand. “And this will remind us both that it is not enough to be cautious in the expression of our thoughts. We must allow no uncharitable feeling to remain in our hearts.”“‘Murder will out,’” he added more lightly, seeing her moved. “And, after all, isn’t Mr. Schöninger a fine fellow?”Madame made no direct reply. She could not yet be enthusiastic about the Jew. “I think we should have supper,” she said, and went down to look after Jane.“O madame! did you see the look that man gave you?” cried the girl.“No matter about that,” the lady said calmly. “It was unfortunate that I should not have known he was coming. You must be careful to give some sign when visitors are coming in, and not introduce them in that noiseless way.”Madame held, with the Duke of Wellington, that it is not wise to accuse one’s self to a servant. The humility, instead of edifying, only provokes to insubordination.“I was coming down from the chambers, and met them at the street door, madame,” Jane made haste to say; “and I thought you would hear the steps.”“Very well, Jane; it’s no matter. I’m sure you do your duty faithfully. And now we will have supper.”

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”

A GLANCE FROM MR. SCHÖNINGER.

Nonebut people of routine ever used their prayer-books while F. Chevreuse was reading or singing Mass, and it was seldom that even such people used them the first time they heard him; for it was not enough that those who assisted should unite their intention with that of the priest, and then pray their own prayers, recalled now and then to the altar by the sound of the bell: their whole attention was riveted there from the first.

That penetrating voice, which enunciated every word with such exquisite clearness, speaking rapidly only because so earnest, was heard throughout the church, and its vivid emphasis gave new life to every prayer of the service. When F. Chevreuse saidDominus vobiscum!one replied as a matter of course—would as soon, indeed, have neglected to answer his face-to-face greeting on the street as this from the altar; theOrate, fratres, compelled the listener to pray; and, at theDomine, non sum dignus, one felt confounded and abashed.

Was it, then, you asked yourself, the first time this priest had said Mass, that he should stand so like a man who sees a vision? No; F. Chevreuse had been fifteen years a priest. Had he, perhaps, an intellect more high than the ordinary, or a superior sanctity? No, again; though a clearer mind or a nobler Christian soul one would scarcely wish to see. The peculiarity lay chiefly, we should guess, in a large, impassioned, and generous heart, which, like a strong fountain for ever tossing up its freshening tide, overflowed his being, and made even the driest facts bud and blossom perennially. In that heart, nothing worthy of life ever faded or grew old. Its possessions were dowered with the freshness of immortal youth.

Still, these gifts might have been partially ineffectual if nature had not added to them a sanguine temperament, and the priceless blessing of a body capable of enduring severe and prolonged labor. F. Chevreuse was spared that misery of a bright intelligence and an active will for ever pent and thwarted by physical incompetence, the soul by its nature constantly compelled to issue mandates to the body, which the body by its weakness is as inevitably compelled to disobey. In that wide brain of his, thoughts had ample elbow-room, and could range themselves without crowding or confusion; and the broad shoulders and deep chest showed with what full breathing the flame of life was fanned. His mind was always working, yet there was no sign of a feverish head; the eyes were steady, and the close-cut gray hair grew so thick as to form a crown.

For the rest, let his life speak. We respect the privacy of such a soul; and, though we would fain show him real and admirable, we sketch F. Chevreuse with a shy pencil.

The church of S. John was a new and unfinished one on Church Street. This street ran east and west, parallel with the Cocheco, and half-way up the South Hill, which here sloped so abruptly that the buildings on the lower side had one more story at the rear than in front, and those on the upper side one more story in front than at the rear. In consequence of this deceptive appearance, those who liked to put the best foot forward preferred to live on the upper side, though it doomed them to a north light in their houses, while those who thought more of comfort than of display chose the other side with a southward frontage.

The church was set back so as to leave a square in front, and its entrance was but four or five steps above the street; but at the back a large and well-lighted basement was visible. The priest’s house stood close to the street, on the eastern side of this square, and so near that between the back corner of its main part and the front corner of the church there was scarcely space for two persons to stand abreast. This narrow passage, screened by a yard or so of iron railing, gave access to a long flight of stairs that led to the basements of the church and of the house.

Seen from the front, this house was a little, melancholy, rain-streaked, wooden cottage, which might be regarded as a blot upon the grandeur of the church, or an admirable foil for it, as one had a mind to think. The door opened almost on the sidewalk, and beside the door were two dismal windows with the curtains down. In the space above, another curtained window was set between the two sharp slants of the roof. On the side opposite the church, where a lane ran down to the next street, the prospect was more cheering. You saw there an L as wide as the main building, though not so deep, and projecting from it so as to give another street door at the end of a veranda, and allow space for two windows at the rear of the house. This L was Mrs. Chevreuse’s peculiar domain, as the house was that of the priest. Her sitting-room and bedroom were here; and no one acquainted with the customs of the place ever came to the veranda door unless they could claim an intimate friendship with the priest’s mother.

The parlor with the two dismal front windows beside the entrance was used as a reception-room. Back of that was the priest’s private sitting-room, with two windows looking out on the veranda, and one window commanding the basement entrance of the church, the pleasant green space around it, and the flight of stairs that led up to the street. F. Chevreuse’s arm-chair and writing-table always stood in this window, and behind them was a door leading into a little side-room containing a strong desk where he kept papers and money, and a sofa on which he took an occasional nap.

Up-stairs were two sleeping-rooms; down-stairs, as the hill sloped, the kitchen, dining-room, and the two rooms occupied by Jane, the cook, and Andrew, the priest’s man. There was space enough in the house, and it had the charm of irregularity; but from the street, as we have said, it was a melancholy-looking structure. F. Chevreuse, however, could not have been better pleased with it had it been a palace. Within, all was comfort and love for him; and he probably never looked at the outside. The new church and his people engrossed his thoughts.

Mrs. Chevreuse was not so indifferent. “It would not look well for me to go up on a ladder, and paint the outsidewalls,” she said to herself, her only confidant in such matters; “but, if it could be turned inside-out for one day, I would quickly have it looking less like an urchin with a soiled face.”

No one could doubt this assertion after having seen the interior of this castle of the rueful countenance. There she could go up on a ladder without shocking any one, and from basement to attic the place was as fresh as a rose. But the nicety was never intrusive. This lady’s house-keeping perspective was admirably arranged, and her point of view the right one. Cleanliness and order dwelt with her, not as tyrants, but as good fairies who were visible only when looked for. If you should chance to think of it, you would observe that everything which should be polished shone like a mirror; that the white was immaculate, the windows clear, and the furniture well-placed. You might recollect that the door was never opened for you by an untidy house-maid, and that no odors from the kitchen ever saluted your nostrils on entering, though a bouquet on the stair-post sometimes breathed a fragrant welcome.

Now, housekeepers know that the observance of all these little details of order and good taste involves a great deal of care and labor; but they sometimes forget that their exquisiteménageloses its principal charm when the care and labor are made manifest. It cannot be denied that the temptation is strong now and then to let Cæsar know by what pains we produce these apparently simple results, which he takes as a matter of course; but, when the temptation is yielded to, the results cease to be entirely pleasing. The unhappy man becomes afraid to walk on our carpets, to touch our door-knobs, to sit in our chairs, eat eggs with our spoons, lay his odious pipe on our best table-cover, or tie the curtains into a knot. The touching confidence with which he was wont to ask that an elaborate dinner might be prepared for him in fifteen minutes vanishes from his face like a rainbow tint that leaves the cloud behind. “A cold lunch will do,” he tells you resignedly, and you detect incipient dyspepsia in his countenance. The free motions that seemed to feel infinite space about them are no more. The anxious hero pulls his toga about him in the most undignified and ungraceful manner, lest it should upset a flower-pot or a chair. In fine, the tormenting gadfly of our neatness stings him up and down his days, till he would fain seek refuge and rest in disorder.

Mother Chevreuse knew all this perfectly, and behaved herself in so heroic a manner that her son never suspected, what was quite true, that the unnecessary steps he caused her might make several miles a day.

One morning after early Mass, toward the last of May, she seated herself in the arm-chair by the window, and watched for the priest to come in from the church. This was a part of her daily programme, and the only time of day she ever occupied what she called his throne. After his breakfast, they did not meet, save incidentally, till supper-time; for, except when they had company, F. Chevreuse dined alone. The mother had perceived that, when they dined together, there had been a struggle between the sense of duty and courtesy which made him wish to entertain her, and the abstraction he naturally felt in the midst of the cares and labors of the day, and, ever on the watch lest she should in any way intrude on his vocation, had herself made this arrangement. The fact that he did not oppose itwas a sufficient proof that it was agreeable to him.

This mother was the softer type of her son, as though what you would carve in granite you should first mould in wax. There was the same compact form, telling of health, strength, and activity, the same clear eyes, the same thick gray hair crowning a forehead more wide than high. Their expressions differed as their circumstances did; cheerfulness and good sense were common to both; but, where the priest was authoritative, the woman was dignified.

Presently her face brightened, for the fold of a black robe showed some one standing just inside the chapel door, and the next moment F. Chevreuse appeared, his hands clasped behind him, his face bent thoughtfully downward. Seeing him thus for the first time, you are surprised to find him only medium height. At the altar, he had appeared tall. You might wonder, too, what great beauty his admirers found in him. But scarcely had the doubt formed itself in your mind, before it was triumphantly answered. The priest’s first step was into a shadow, his second into sunlight; and, as that light smote him, he lifted his head quickly, and a smile broke over his face. Wheeling about, he fronted the east. The river-courses had hollowed out a deep ravine between him and the sunrise, and the tide of glory flowed in and filled that from rim to rim, and curled over the green hills like wine-froth over a beaker. He stood gazing, smiling and undazzled, his face illuminated from within as from without. It might be said of F. Chevreuse, as it was of William Blake, that, when the sun rose “he did not see a round, fiery disk somewhat like a guinea, but an innumerable company of the heavenly hosts crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!’”

The mother watched, but did not interrupt him. She knew well that such moments were fruitful, and that he was storing away in his mind the precious vintage of that spring morning to bring it forth again at some future time fragrant with the bouquet of a spiritual significance. “Glimpses of God,” she called such moods.

He threw his head back, and, with a swift glance, took in the whole scene; the fleckless blue overhead, the closely gathered city beneath, the lights and shades that played in the dewy greensward at his feet, and, turning about, his mother’s loving face—a fit climax for the morning.

“Bon jour, Mère Chevreuse!” he called out, touching hisbarrette.

As he disappeared into the house, Mrs. Chevreuse went into her own sitting-room, which opened from his, and gave a last glance at the table prepared for his breakfast. The preparation was not elaborate. A little stand by the eastern window held a pitcher of milk, a bowl and spoon, and a napkin; and Jane, following the priest up-stairs, added a dish of oatmeal pudding.

F. Chevreuse walked briskly through the entry, and threw the street door wide open, then came back singing, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and the King of glory shall come in!” and continued, as he entered the room, his voice hardly settled from song to speech, “What created things are more like the King of glory than light and air? They are as his glance and his breath.”

The look that met his was sympathizing, but the words that replied were scarcely an answer to his question. “Your breakfast is cooling, F. Chevreuse,” she said.

He took no heed, but, clasping his hands behind him, walked to and frowith a step that showed flying would have been the more congenial motion.

“Mother,” he exclaimed, “the mysteries of human nature are as inscrutable as the mysteries of God. Would the angels believe, if they had not seen, that a Mass has been said this morning here in the midst of a crowded city, with only a score or so of persons to assist? Why was not the church thronged with worshippers, and thousands pressing outside to kiss the foundation-stones? When I turned with theEcce Agnus Dei, why did not all present fall with their faces to the floor? And when Miss Honora Pembroke walked away from the communion-railing, why did not every one look at her with wonder and admiration?—the woman who bore her God in her bosom! And just now, when the sun rose”—he stopped and looked at his mother with a combative air—“why did not the people look up and hail it as the signet of the Almighty?”

Mother Chevreuse smiled pleasantly. She was used to being set up as a target for these unanswerable questions, especially in the morning, at which time the priest was likely to be, as Jane expressed it, “rather high in his mind.”

“If you could take your breakfast, my son,” she suggested.

“Breakfast!” He glanced with a look of aversion at the table that held his frugal meal, considered a moment, recognized the propriety of its existence, finally seated himself in his place, and began to eat with a very good appetite. “You were quite right, my lady,” he remarked; “the sunshine was drinking my milk all up. What thirsty creatures they are, those beams!”

Let it not be supposed that F. Chevreuse was so ascetical as never to eat except when urged to do so. On the contrary, he took good care to keep up the health and strength necessary for the performance of his multiform duties as the only priest in a large parish, and he used a wise discrimination in allowing others to fast. “Some fasting is almost as bad as feasting,” he used to say. “Besides injuring the health, it clogs the soul. You look down upon eating when you have dined moderately; but, when you have fasted immoderately, the idea of dinner is elevated till it becomes a constellation. I do not wish to starve, till, when I kneel down and raise my eyes, I can think of nothing but roast beef. Asceticism is not an end, but a means.”

“Mother,” he said presently, laying down his spoon, “why is it that the oatmeal and milk I get at home are better than that I find anywhere else?”

“Children always think the food they get at home better than what they get abroad,” she replied tranquilly.

Why should she tell him that what he called milk was cream, and that the making of that “stirabout” was a fine-art, which had been taught Jane line upon line, and precept upon precept, till every grain dropped according to rule, and the motion of the pudding spoon was as exact as a sonnet? Instead of being pleased, he would have been disturbed to know that so much pains had been taken for him.

“I like no earthly comfort that has cost any one much trouble or pain,” he would say. Like most persons who have been spared the petty cares of life, he did not know that in this discordant world there is no earthly comfort to any one which is not a pain to some other.

Breakfast over, the priest went promptly about his business; and Mrs. Chevreuse, shutting the doorbetween their rooms, brought her work-basket to the stand where the tray had been, and seated herself to mend a rent in asoutane.

It was a pleasant room, with its one window toward the church, and an opposite one looking over the city and the distant hills, and most enticingly comfortable, with deep chairs, convenient tables, and tiny stands always within reach, and an open fireplace which was seldom, save at mid-summer, without its little glimmer of fire at some time of day. And even then, if the day was chilly or overcast, the fact that it was mid-summer did not prevent the kindling of Mother Chevreuse’s beltane flame. From this room and the bedroom behind it could be heard on still nights the dashing of the Cocheco among its rocks.

Mrs. Chevreuse worked and thought. The sunbeams sparkled on the scissors, needles, bodkins, and whatever bright thing it could find in her work-basket, on her eyeglasses and thimble, on the smooth-worn gold of her wedding-ring, and the tiny needle weaving deftly to and fro in an almost invisible darn, of which the lady was not a little proud. Her mind wove, too; not those flimsy fancies of youth so like spider’s webs upon the grass, that glitter only when the morning dew is on them: the threads of her dream-tapestry ended in heaven, though begun on earth, and their severance could only change hope into fruition. And all the time, while hand and heart slipped to and fro, the lady was aware of everything that went on in the house. She heard Andrew come into the next room with the morning mail, heard the sound of voices while he received his orders for the day, heard him go clumping down-stairs, and out through the kitchen into the chapel. Presently the clumping resounded outside, and, glancing across the room, she saw the old man standing on the basement stairs, his head on a level with her window, looking at her across the space that intervened, and gesticulating, with a twinkling candlestick in each hand.

Mother Chevreuse, still holding her work, went and threw the sash up.

“I think, madame, begging your pardon, that I can clean these just as well as you can,” says Andrew, with a very positive nod and a little shake that set all the glass drops twinkling and tinkling.

“Do you, Andrew?” returned madame pleasantly. “Very well, then, you can clean them, and save me the trouble. But don’t forget to rub all the whiting out of the creases.”

Andrew changed countenance as he turned slowly about to descend the stairs. Mrs. Chevreuse had been gradually taking the care of the altar from his rather careless hands, and this had been his diplomatic way of escaping the candlestick cleaning of that day without asking her to do it. He hobbled down-stairs again discomfited, and the lady went smiling back to her work.

“It is all very well for Sharp’s rifles,” she remarked, threading her needle; “but I don’t like being fired at in that spiral manner.”

Still weaving again with hand and heart, she heard Jane going about, like a neat household machine doing everything in its exact time and place, severe on interruption, merciless on mud or dust, ever ready to have a skirmish on these grounds with Andrew; she heard the rattle of paper from the next room, as letters and parcels were opened, the scratching of F. Chevreuse’s quill as he wrote answers to one or two correspondents, or made up accounts, and the little tap with which he pressed the stamp upon the letters.

How peaceful and sweet her life was, all she loved within reach, all she hoped for so sure! She breathed a sigh of thanksgiving, then dropped her work and listened; for the priest was preparing to go out. Every morning was spent by him in collecting for his church. He had found in Crichton a thousand or more practical Catholics, with one shabby old chapel to worship in, and nearly as many nominal Catholics who did not worship at all; and in three years, with scarcely any capital to begin with besides faith, he had raised and nearly finished a large and beautiful church, and gathered into it the greater part of the wanderers.

“Be prudent, my son!” the mother had warned him when he began what seemed so venturesome an enterprise.

“I am so,” he replied, with decision. “It would be the height of imprudence to leave these people any longer straying like lost sheep. When the Master of the universe commands that a house be built for him, is it for me to fear he will not be able to pay for it?”

She said no more. Mme. Chevreuse always remembered to distinguish between the son and the priest, and was never more proud of her motherhood than when her natural authority was confronted by the supernatural authority of her child. But she always sighed when he started on a collecting-tour, for his faith had to be supplemented by hard work, and often he came back worn with fatigue, and depressed by the sights of poverty, sorrow, and sin he had witnessed.

All had gone well with the church, however—so well that a new enterprise had been added, and a convent school was just making its small beginning in Crichton.

“Is madame visible?” asked a voice smothered against the door.

“Entrez!” she answered gaily; and the priest put his head in.

“Say a little prayer to S. Joseph for F. Chevreuse to-day,” he said; “for he is collecting for the great note.”

“Oh!” She looked anxiously at him, and met a reassuring smile in return.

“Never fear, mother!” he said cheerfully. “Do not all the houses and lands belong to God?”

“Certainly!” she answered, but sighed to herself as he went away: “it is very true they all belong to God, but I’m afraid the devil has some very heavy mortgages on them.”

Later in the day, Miss Ferrier called for Mrs. Chevreuse to go out and visit the sisters at the new convent. “I have taken all I could think of this morning,” she said, and enumerated various useful articles. “I suppose they want nearly everything.”

Mrs. Chevreuse commended her liberality. “But I am glad you did not think of cordage,” she added; “for that is the very thing I did remember.”

She opened a large basket, and laughingly displayed a collection of ropes and cords varying from coils of clothes-line and curtain-cord to balls of fine pink twine. “Jane’s clothes-line gave out yesterday,” she said, “and that made me think of this.”

Miss Ferrier gave a little shiver and shrug. “It is very nice and useful, I know; but ropes always remind me of hanging.”

“Naturally,” returned the lady, tying on her bonnet: “that is their vocation.”

“But hanging is such a dreadful punishment!” And the young woman shivered again.

“Why, my pictures seem to enjoyit,” Mrs. Chevreuse replied, persistently cheerful.

“Now, really, madame—“

“Now, really, mademoiselle,” was the laughing interruption, “what has put your thoughts on such a track this morning? If you want my opinion on the subject, I cannot give it, for I have none. All I can say is that, if I thought any one were destined to kill me, I would instantly write and sign a petition for his pardon, and leave it to be presented to the governor and council at the proper time. Think of something pleasant. I am ready now. We will go out through the house.”

She locked the veranda door, and put the key in her pocket. “I have only to give Jane an order. Jane!” she called, leaning out the window.

A head appeared from the kitchen window beneath, and the mistress gave her order down the outside of the house. “It saves so much going up and down stairs for two old women,” she explained. “Now, my dear.”

They went into the priest’s sitting-room, and again the door was locked behind them, and the key this time hung on a nail over the writing-table. “Wait a moment,” said madame then, and began picking up bits of paper scattered about the room. The priest had torn up a letter, and absently dropped the fragments on the carpet instead of into the waste-basket, and a breeze had been playing with them.

“How provoking men are,” remarked Miss Ferrier, stooping for a fragment which a puff of air instantly caught away from her.

“Are they?” asked Mrs. Chevreuse quietly. “I do not know, I have so little to do with them. Most people are provoking sometimes, I dare say.”

Having made a second ineffectual dive for the strip of paper, the young woman had not patience enough left to bear so cool an evasion. “F. Chevreuse deserves a scolding for strewing this about,” she said.

The mother glanced at her with that sort of surprise which is more disconcerting than anger. Miss Ferrier blushed, but would not be so silenced.

“If you should oblige him to pick them up once,” she continued, “that would cure him.”

“Oblige him!” repeated the mother with a more emphasized coldness. “I never oblige F. Chevreuse to do anything. I should not dream of calling his attention to such a trifle. He has higher affairs on his mind. Now we will go.”

Their drive took them through the town by its longest avenue, Main Street, which followed the Saranac half-way to its source. School children in Crichton looked on Main Street as their meridian of longitude, and were under the impression that it reached from pole to pole. It crossed the Cocheco by the central one of three parallel bridges, climbed straight up the steep North Height, and stretched out into the country. The convent grounds were on the west bank of the Saranac, twenty acres of rough land, roughly enclosed, with an old tumble-down house that had been a tavern in the early days of Crichton. It was a desolate-looking place, with not a tree nor flower to be seen, but needed only time and labor to become a little Eden.

In the eyes of Sister Cecilia it was even now an Eden. Her ardent and generous nature, made still brighter by a beautiful Christian enthusiasm, saw in advance the blossom and fruit of unplanted trees, and seeds yet in the paper. Full of delight to her was all this planning and labor.

She was out-doors when the carriage drove up, in earnest consultation with two workmen, directing the laying out of the kitchen-garden, and, recognizing her visitors, hastened toward them with a cordial welcome. Sister Cecilia was a little over forty years of age, tall and graceful, and had one of those sunny faces that show heaven is already begun in the heart. When she smiled, the sparkling of her deep-blue eyes betrayed mirth and humor.

“Dread the labor?” she exclaimed, in answer to a question from Miss Ferrier. “Indeed not! I was so charmed with the idea of coming to this wild place that I had a scruple about it, and was almost afraid I ought not to be indulged. It is always delightful to begin at the beginning, and see the effect of your work.”

She led them about the place and told her plans. Here a grove was to be planted, there the path would wind, vines would be trained against this stone wall.

“But I don’t see any stone wall,” protested Miss Ferrier.

Sister Cecilia laughed. “I see it distinctly, and so will you next year. There are piles of stones on the land which will save us a good deal of money; and we are very likely to have some work done for nothing. Do you know how kind the laborers are to us? Twenty men have offered to do each a day’s work in our garden free of charge. Those are two of them. Now, here we are going to have a large arbor covered with honeysuckle and roses. It must be closed on the east side, because there will be a river-road outside the wall some day, and we should be visible from it. But the south side will be all open, so we can sit under the roses and look down that beautiful river and over all the city. You see the knoll was made on purpose for an arbor.”

As they went into the house, a slender shape glided past in the dusk of the further entry. The light from a roof window, shining down the stairs, revealed a face like a lily drooped a little sidewise, a wealth of brown hair gathered back, and a sweet, shy smile. It was as though some one had carried a lighted waxen taper through the shadows where she disappeared.

“It is Anita!” exclaimed Miss Ferrier, stopping on the threshold of the parlor. “Why did she not come to us?”

“That dear Anita!” said the sister. “She has a piano lesson to give at this hour, and would not dream of turning aside from the shortest road to the music-room. If you were her own mother, Mme. Chevreuse, she would not come to you without permission. Yet such a tender, loving creature I never knew before. Obedience is the law of her life. Next spring she will begin her novitiate.”

The house was looked over, the other sisters seen, and the offerings brought them duly presented and acknowledged; then the two ladies started for home.

Miss Ferrier was rather silent when they were alone. She had not forgotten the reproof of the morning, and she felt aggrieved by it. Mrs. Chevreuse had known that she was but jesting, and might have been a little less touchy, she thought. What was the matter that almost every one was finding fault with her lately? Her mother accused her of being cross and captious, her lover found her exacting, and Mrs. Gerald had thought her too assuming on one occasion, and yet all she was conscious of was a blind feeling of loss—some such sense as deep-buried roots may have when the sky grows darkover the tree above. Little things that once would have passed by like the idle wind now had power to make her shrink, as the lightest touch will hurt a sore; and trifles that had once given her pleasure now fell dead and flat. The time had been when the mere driving through the city in her showy carriage had elated her, when she had sat in delighted consciousness of the satin cushions, the glittering harness and wheels, and even of the band on the coachman’s hat and the capes that fluttered from his shoulders. Now they sometimes gave her a feeling of weary disgust, and she assured herself that she knew not why. If any suspicion glanced across her mind that a worm was eating into the very centre of her rose of life, and the outer petals withered merely because the heart was withering, she shut her eyes to it, and kept seeking here and there for comfort, but found none. Honora was the only person who ever really soothed her; and, for some reason, or for no reason, even Honora’s soothing now and then held a sting that was keenly felt.

“Is it possible she is resenting my reproof?” thought Mrs. Chevreuse, and exerted herself to be pleasant and friendly, but without much success. Miss Ferrier’s affected gaiety was gone, and she had no disposition to resume it.

“She is not so good-tempered as I believed,” the priest’s mother thought when they parted, with one of those unjust judgments which the good form quite as often as the bad.

Miss Ferrier drove on homeward. She had no need to tell the coachman which way to drive, nor how, for he knew perfectly well that he was to make his horses prance slowly through Bank Street, where, in a certain insurance office up one flight of a granite building, Mr. Lawrence Gerald bit his nails and fumed over a clerk’s desk, and half attended to his business while inwardly protesting against what he called his misfortunes. Perhaps his desk faced the window, or maybe his companions were good enough to call his attention to it; for it seldom happened that Miss Ferrier, glancing up, did not see him waiting to bow to her. He did not love the girl, but he felt a trivial pride in contemplating the evidences of that wealth which was one day to be his unless he should change his mind. He sometimes admitted the possibility of the latter alternative.

To-day he was not at the window; but his lady-love had hardly time to be conscious of disappointment, when she saw him lounging in the doorway down-stairs. He came listlessly out as the carriage drew up, and at the same moment Miss Lily Carthusen appeared from a shop near by, and joined them. This young lady took a good deal of exercise in the open air, and might be met almost any time, and always with the latest news to tell.

“I congratulate you both,” she said, in her sprightliest manner. “That dreadful organist of yours has put his wrist out of joint, and cannot play again for a month or two. Isn’t it delightful?” She laughed elfishly. “Haven’t you heard of it? Oh! yes; it is true. It happened this morning when he came down the dark stairway in his boarding-house. He tumbled against the dear old balusters, and put his wrist out. I never before knew the good of dark stairways.”

“Why, Lily! aren’t you ashamed?” remonstrated Miss Ferrier, smiling faintly.

“Do you think I ought to be ashamed?” inquired Miss Lily, withan ingenuous expression in her large, light-blue eyes.

“Yes; I do,” replied Miss Ferrier, much edified.

“Well, then, I won’t,” was the satisfactory conclusion.

“I am sorry for Mr. Glover,” Miss Ferrier remarked gravely.

“Now, my dear mademoiselle, please don’t be so crushingly good!” cried the other. “You know perfectly well that he plays execrably, and spoils the singing of your beautiful choir; and you know that you would be perfectly delighted if F. Chevreuse would pension him off. Don’t try to look grieved, for you can’t.”

“I don’t pretend to be a saint, Miss Carthusen,” said Annette, dropping her eyes.

“And I don’t pretend to be a sinner,” was the mocking retort.

Mr. Gerald smiled at this little duel, as men are wont to smile at such scenes. It did not hurt him, and it did amuse him.

“But the best part of the business is that F. Chevreuse has asked Mr. Schöninger to play in his stead,” pursued the news-bringer. “He has written a note requesting him to call there this evening.”

Miss Ferrier drew her shawl about her, and leaned back against the cushions. She had an air of dismissing the subject and the company which, not being either rude or affected, was so near being stately that Mr. Gerald was pleased with it, and, to reward her, begged an invitation to lunch.

“I had just come out for my daily sandwich,” he said; “but if you will take pity on me—“

She smilingly made room for him by her side, and drove off full of delight.

The afternoon waned, and, as evening approached, Mrs. Chevreuse sat in her own room again, waiting for the priest to come home. She had visited her sick and poor, looked to her household affairs, stepped into the church to arrange some fresh flowers, and see that the candlesticks shone with spotless brilliancy, and was now trying to interest herself in a book while she waited. But it was hard to fix her attention; it constantly wandered from the page. Jane had heard and told her of the accident to their organist, and the rumor that Mr. Schöninger was to take his place; but had not told the news by any means with the glee of a Lily Carthusen. On the contrary, it had seemed to her mind an almost incredible horror that a Jew was to take any part in a service performed before the altar whereon the Lord of heaven was enthroned. To Jane’s mind, every Jew was a Judas. That he could be moral, that he could adore his Creator and pray earnestly for forgiveness of his sins, she did not for an instant believe. The worst criminal, if nominally a Catholic, was in her eyes infinitely preferable to the best Jew in the world.

“Andrew declared it was so, madame, and that he carried a note to that Mr. Schöninger before dinner,” she said, concluding her lamentation; “but nothing will make me believe it till I hear F. Chevreuse say so with his own mouth.”

“Oh! well, don’t distress yourself about it, Jane,” her mistress replied soothingly. “Perhaps it is a mistake; but, if it is not, you may be sure that F. Chevreuse knows best. He always has good reasons for what he does. Besides, we must be charitable. Who knows but the services of the church and our prayers might, by the blessing of God, convert this man.”

“Convert a rattlesnake!” criedJane, too much excited to be respectful.

But Mrs. Chevreuse, though she had spoken soothingly to her subordinate, was not herself altogether satisfied. She was a woman of large mind and heart; yet, if any one people in the world came last in her regard, it was the Jewish people. Moreover, she had seen Mr. Schöninger but once, and then at an unfortunate moment when something had occurred to draw that strange blank look over his face. The impression left on her mind was an unpleasant one that there was something dark and secret in the man.

“Of course it will all be right,” she said to herself, annoyed that she should feel disturbed for such a cause. “I am foolish to think of it.”

The street door was opened and left wide, after F. Chevreuse’s fashion, and she heard his quick, light step in the entry. Dropping her book, she smiled involuntarily at the sound. How sweet to a woman is this nightly coming home of father, son, or husband! He came in, went to the inner room, and opened and closed his desk, then returned to the sitting-room, threw up the corner window, from which he could see into her apartment, and seated himself in his arm-chair, leaning forward as he did so to bow a smiling recognition across to her. His day’s work was as nearly over as it could be. In the morning, he must go out to meet his duties; in the evening, they must seek him. The hour for their social life had come; and though subject to constant interruptions, so that scarcely ten minutes at a time were left them for confidential intercourse, they were free to snatch what they could get.

Mrs. Chevreuse put her book away, and opened the door between the two sitting-rooms. “Father,” she said immediately, “is it true that you are going to have that Jew play the organ at S. John’s?”

The priest rose hastily, and his mother’s foot was arrested on the threshold; for just opposite her, coming into the room from the entry, was Miss Lily Carthusen, leading a little girl by the hand, and followed by “that Jew”; while, in wrathful perspective, like a thunder-head on the horizon, gloomed the face of Jane, the servant-woman.

The silence was only for the space of a lightning-flash, and the flash was not wanting; it shot across the room from a pair of eyes that looked as though they might sear to ashes what they gazed upon in anger. The next moment, the eyes drooped, and their owner was bowing to F. Chevreuse.

Miss Carthusen was perfectly self-possessed and voluble, seeming to have heard nothing. “This little wilful girl would come with Mr. Schöninger, madame,” she said; “and, as he is not going back, I was obliged to come and see her home again safely.”

The truth was that Miss Lily, who boarded in the same house with the gentleman, had encouraged the child to come, in order that she might accompany her.

F. Chevreuse had blushed slightly but he showed no other embarrassment. It was the first time that Mr. Schöninger had entered his house, and he welcomed him with a more marked cordiality, perhaps, on account of the unfortunate speech which had greeted his coming.

“You are welcome, sir! I thank you for taking the trouble to come to me. It was my place to call on you, but my engagements left me no time. Allow me to present you to my mother, Mme. Chevreuse.”

“My mother” had probably never been placed in so disagreeable a position,but her behavior was admirable. The man she had involuntarily insulted was forced to admit that nothing could be more perfect than the respectful courtesy of her salutation, which maintained with dignified sincerity the distance she really felt, while it expressed her regret at having intruded that feeling on him.

“Yet they talk of charity!” he thought; and the lady did not miss a slight curl of the lip which was not hidden by his profound obeisance.

The introduction over, she left Mr. Schöninger to the priest, and took refuge with his little friend, since she could not with propriety leave the room. The young lady was not agreeable to her. Mme. Chevreuse had that pure honesty and good sense which looks with clear regards through a murky and dissimulating nature; for, after all, it is the deceitful who are most frequently duped.

Miss Carthusen went flitting about the room, making herself quite at home. She selected a rosebud from a bouquet on the mantelpiece, and fastened it in madame’s gray hair with her fingers as light as snowflakes; she daintily abstracted the glasses the lady held, and put them on over her own large pale eyes. “Glasses always squeeze my eyelashes,” she said; “not that they are so very long, though, at least, they are not so long as Bettine von Arnim’s little goose-girl’s. Hers were two inches long; and the other girls laughed at them, so that she went away by herself and cried. Perhaps, beyond a certain point, eyelashes are like endurance, and cease to be a virtue. Who is it tells of a young lady whose long lashes gave her an overdressed appearance in the morning, so that one felt as though she ought to have a shorter set to come down to breakfast in?”

Mrs. Chevreuse observed with interest the striking difference between the two men who sat near her talking, both, as any one could see, strong and fiery natures, yet so unlike in temper and manner. The priest was electrical and demonstrative; he uttered the thought that rose in his mind; he was a man to move the crowd, and carry all before him. The ardor of the other was the steady glow of the burning coal that may be hidden in darkness, and he shrank with fastidious pride and distrust from any revelation of the deeper feelings of his heart, and held in check even his passing emotions. He would have said, with that Marquis de Noailles, quoted by Liszt:Qu’il n’y a guère moyen de causer de quoi que ce soit, avec qui que ce soit; and, doubtless, he had found it so.

F. Chevreuse had explained his wishes: their organist was disabled, and they had no one capable of taking his place. If Mr. Schöninger would consent to take charge of their singing, he would consider it a great favor.

Mr. Schöninger had no engagement which would prevent his doing so, and it need not be looked on at all as a favor, but a mere matter of business. His profession was music.

F. Chevreuse would insist on feeling obliged, although he would waive the pleasure of expressing that feeling.

Mr. Schöninger intimated that it was perhaps desirable he should meet the choir an hour before the evening service.

The priest had been about to make the same suggestion, and, since the time was so near, would be very happy to have his visitor take supper with him.

The visitor thanked him, but had just dined.

Nothing could be more properand to the point, nor more utterly stiff and frozen, than this dialogue was. F. Chevreuse shivered, and called little Rose—Rosebud, they named her—to him.

The child went with a most captivating mingling of shyness and obedience in her air, walking a little from side to side, as a ship beats against the wind, making way in spite of fears. Her red cheeks growing redder, a tremor struggling with a smile on her small mouth, the intrepid little blossom allowed herself to be lifted to the stranger’s knees, her eyes seeking her friend’s for courage and strength.

Mr. Schöninger smiled on his favorite with a tenderness which gave his face a new character, and watched curiously while the priest reassured and petted her till he won her attention to himself. His own experience and the traditions of his people had taught him to look on the Catholic Church as his most deadly antagonist; yet now, in spite of all, his heart relented and warmed a little to one of her ministers. He knew better than to take an apparent love for children as any proof of goodness—some of the worst persons he had ever known were excessively fond of them—yet it looked amiable in an honest person, and F. Chevreuse’s manner was particularly pleasant and winning.

Embarrassed by the notice bestowed on her by all, yet, with a premature address, seeking to hide that embarrassment, the child glanced about the room in search of some diversion. Her eyes were caught by a picture of the Madonna.

“Oh! who is that pretty lady with a wedding-ring round her head?” she cried out.

“She,” said F. Chevreuse, “is a sweet and holy Jewish lady whom we all love.”

The little girl glanced apprehensively at her friend—perhaps she had been told never to speak the word Jew in his presence—and saw a quick light flicker in his eyes. He was looking keenly at the priest, as if trying to fathom his intention. Was the man determined to win him in spite of his coldness? Was it his way of making proselytes, this fascinating delicacy and tenderness? He did not wish to like F. Chevreuse; yet what could he do in the presence of that radiant charity?

“I think our business is done, sir,” he said, rising.

The priest became matter-of-fact at once.

“It is not necessary for me to make any suggestions to your good taste,” he said; “but I may be permitted to remark that our service is not merely æsthetic, but has a vital meaning, and I would like the music to be conducted earnestly.”

“I shall make it as earnest as your composers with allow, sir,” the musician replied, with a slightly mocking smile.

“My composers!” exclaimed the priest, laughing. “I repudiate them. Was it one of my composers who wrote the music of theStabat Mater, and set his voices pirouetting and waltzing through the woes of the Queen of sorrows? The world accuses Rossini of showing in that his contempt for Christianity. I would not say so much. I believe he thought of nothing but the rhythm and the vowel-sounds.”

“And was it one of my composers,” the Jew retorted, “who set theKyrie EleisonI heard on passing your church last Sunday to an air as gay as any dance tune? If the words had been in English instead of Latin, it would have sounded blasphemous.”

F. Chevreuse made a gesture ofresignation. “What can I do if the musicians are not so pious as the painters, if they will put the sound in the statue, and the sense in the pedestal? My only refuge is the Gregorian, which nobody but saints will tolerate. I am not a composer.”

The call was at an end, and the visitors went.

As soon as they were in the street, Miss Carthusen observed: “I notice that F. Chevreuse adopts Paracelsus’ method of cure: he anoints with fine ointment, not the wound, but the sword that made the wound.”

She had been annoyed at the little attention paid to herself in contrast with the honor shown the priest’s mother, and wished to find out if Mr. Schöninger kept any resentment toward Mme. Chevreuse. He felt her inquisitive, unscrupulous eyes searching his face in sidelong glances.

“The priest was very courteous to me,” he replied calmly. “And I should think that madame might be a very agreeable person to those she likes.”

The young woman instantly launched into a glowing eulogy of the priest’s mother, till her listener bit his lips. He was not quite ready to be altogether charmed with the lady.

“And,à proposof medicine,” said Miss Carthusen lightly, “it has been revealed to me to-day who the first homœopathist was.”

“Is it a secret?”

“It was Achilles,” she replied. “Do you not remember that nothing but Achilles’ spear healed the wound that itself had made?”

As soon as they were gone, Mme. Chevreuse turned to her son. “Need I say how sorry I am?” she exclaimed.

Tears were in her eyes. She was touched to the heart that, though he must have been deeply mortified, he should still not have failed for a moment to treat her with even more than ordinary courtesy and affection, as if to show their visitors that he did not dream of reproving her.

“I knew that you felt worse about it than I did, dear mother,” he said, taking her hand. “And this will remind us both that it is not enough to be cautious in the expression of our thoughts. We must allow no uncharitable feeling to remain in our hearts.”

“‘Murder will out,’” he added more lightly, seeing her moved. “And, after all, isn’t Mr. Schöninger a fine fellow?”

Madame made no direct reply. She could not yet be enthusiastic about the Jew. “I think we should have supper,” she said, and went down to look after Jane.

“O madame! did you see the look that man gave you?” cried the girl.

“No matter about that,” the lady said calmly. “It was unfortunate that I should not have known he was coming. You must be careful to give some sign when visitors are coming in, and not introduce them in that noiseless way.”

Madame held, with the Duke of Wellington, that it is not wise to accuse one’s self to a servant. The humility, instead of edifying, only provokes to insubordination.

“I was coming down from the chambers, and met them at the street door, madame,” Jane made haste to say; “and I thought you would hear the steps.”

“Very well, Jane; it’s no matter. I’m sure you do your duty faithfully. And now we will have supper.”

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