Jane Field | Page 6

and overworked, but she was not unhappy, for her future was yet,
in a way, untouched; she had not learned to judge of it by hard
precedent, nor had any mistake of hers made a miserable certainty of it.
It still looked to her as fair ahead as an untrodden field of heaven.
She was quite happy as she sat there; but when her mother, in her black
woollen dress, entered, she felt instantly nervous and fretted. Mrs. Field
said nothing, but the volume and impetus of her anxiety when she saw
her daughter's head in the window seemed to actually misplace the air.
Presently she went to the window, and leaned over to shut it.
"Don't shut the window, mother," said Lois.
"I'm dreadful afraid you'll catch cold, child."
"No, I sha'n't, either. I wish you wouldn't fuss so, mother."
Mrs. Field stood back; the meeting bell began to ring.
"Goin' to meetin', mother?" Lois asked, in a pleasanter voice.
"I thought mebbe I would."
"I guess I won't go. I want to sew some on my dress this evenin'."
"Sha'n't you mind stayin' alone, if I go?"
"Mind stayin' alone? of course I sha'n't. You get the strangest ideas
lately, mother."
Mrs. Field put on her black bonnet and shawl, and started. The bell
tolled, and she passed down the village street with a stiff steadiness of
gait. She felt eager to go to meeting to-night. This old New England
woman, all of whose traditions were purely orthodox, was all
unknowingly a fetich-worshipper in a time of trouble. Ever since her

daughter had been ill, she had had a terrified impulse in her
meeting-going. It seemed to her that if she stayed away, Lois might be
worse. Unconsciously her church attendance became a species of spell,
or propitiation to a terrifying deity, and the wild instinct of the African
awoke in the New England woman.
When she reached the church the bell had stopped ringing, and the
vestry windows were parallelograms of yellow light; the meeting was
in the vestry.
Mrs. Field entered, and took a seat well toward the front. The room was
half filled with people, and the mass of them were elderly and
middle-aged women. There were rows of their homely, faded, and
strong-lined faces set in sober bonnets, a sprinkling of solemn old men,
a few bright-ribboned girls, and in the background a settee or two of
smart young fellows. Right in front of Mrs. Field sat a pretty girl with
roses in her hat. She was about Lois' age, and had been to school with
her.
Mrs. Field, erect and gaunt, with a look of goodness so settled and
pre-eminent in her face that it had almost the effect of a smile, sat and
listened to the minister. He was a young man with boyish shoulders,
and a round face, which he screwed nervously as he talked. He was
vehement, and strung to wiriness with new enthusiasm; he seemed to
toss the doctrines like footballs back and forth before the eyes of the
people.
Mrs. Field listened intently, but all the time it was as if she were shut
up in a corner with her own God and her own religion. There are as
many side chapels as there are individual sorrows in every church.
After the minister finished his discourse, the old men muttered prayers,
with long pauses between. Now and then a young woman played a
gospel tune on a melodeon, and a woman in the same seat with Mrs.
Field led the singing. She was past middle age, but her voice was still
sweet, although once in a while it quavered. She had sung in the church
choir ever since she was a child, and was the prima donna of the village.
The young girl with roses in her hat who sat in front of Mrs. Field also

sang with fervor, although her voice was little more than a sweetly
husky breath. She kept her eyes, at once bold and timid, fixed upon the
young minister as she sang.
When meeting was done, and Mrs. Field arose, the girl spoke to her.
She had a pretty blush on her round cheeks, and she smiled at Mrs.
Field in the same way that she would soon smile at the young minister.
"How's Lois to-night, Mrs. Field?" said she.
"She's pretty well, thank you, Ida."
"I heard she was sick."
"Oh, no, she ain't sick. The spring weather has made her feel kind of
tired out, that's all. It 'most always does."
"Well, I'm glad she isn't sick," said the girl, her radiant absent eyes
turned upon the minister, who was talking with some one at the desk.
"She wasn't out to meeting, and I didn't know but she might be."
"She thought she