On the Church Steps | Page 2

was anything. But your silence, your

confusion--Charlie, you do care a little for her, after all."
Two years ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered around
Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown eyes and the
gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths fluttering around
that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in discovering that the
brown eyes were bright for each and all, and that the gypsy flush was
never stirred by feeling or by thought. It was merely a fixed ensign of
health and good spirits. Consequently the charm had waned, for me at
least; and in my confessions to Bessie since our near intimacy it was
she, not I, who had magnified it into the shadow even of a serious
thought.
"Care for her? Nonsense, Bessie! Do you want me to call her a mere
doll, a hard, waxen--no, for wax will melt--a Parian creature, such as
you may see by the dozens in Schwartz's window any day? It doesn't
gratify you, surely, to hear me say that of any woman."
And then--what possessed me?--I was so angry at myself that I took a
mental résumé of all the good that could be said of Fanny Meyrick--her
generosity, her constant cheerfulness; and in somewhat headlong
fashion I expressed myself: "I won't call her a dolt and an idiot, even to
please you. I have seen her do generous things, and she is never out of
temper."
"Thanks!" said Bessie, nodding her head till the blue feather trembled.
"It is as well, as Aunt Sloman says, to keep my shortcomings before
you."
"When did Aunt Sloman say that?" I interrupted, hoping for a diversion
of the subject.
"This morning only. I was late at breakfast. You know, Charlie, I was
so tired with that long horseback ride, and of course everything waited.
Dear aunty never will begin until I come down, but sits beside the urn
like the forlornest of martyrs, and reads last night's papers over and
over again."

"Well? And was she sorry that she had not invited me to wait with
her?"
"Yes," said Bessie. "She said all sorts of things, and," flushing slightly,
"that it was a pity you shouldn't know beforehand what you were to
expect."
"I wish devoutly that I had been there," seizing the little hand that was
mournfully tapping the weatherbeaten stone, and forcing the downcast
eyes to look at me. "I think, both together, we could have pacified Aunt
Sloman."
It was a diversion, and after a little while Bessie professed she had had
enough of the church steps.
"How those people do stare! Is it the W----s, do you think, Charlie? I
heard yesterday they were coming."
From our lofty position on the hillside we commanded the road leading
out of the village--the road that was all alive with carriages on this
beautiful September morning. The W---- carriage had half halted to
reconnoitre, and had only not hailed us because we had sedulously
looked another way.
"Let's get away," I said, "for the next carriage will not only stop, but
come over;" and Bessie suffered herself to be led through the little
tangle of brier and fern, past the gray old gravestones with "Miss Faith"
and "Miss Mehitable" carved upon them, and into the leafy shadow of
the waiting woods.
Other lovers have been there before us, but the trees whisper no secrets
save their own. The subject of our previous discussion was not resumed,
nor was Fanny Meyrick mentioned, until on our homeward road we
paused a moment on the hilltop, as we always did.
It is indeed a hill of vision, that church hill at Lenox. Sparkling far to
the south, the blue Dome lay, softened and shining in the September
sun. There was ineffable peace in the faint blue sky, and, stealing up

from the valley, a shimmering haze that seemed to veil the bustling
village and soften all the rural sounds.
Bessie drew nearer to me, shading her eyes as she looked down into the
valley: "Charlie dear, let us stay here always. We shall be happier,
better here than to go back to New York."
"And the law-business?" I asked like a brutal bear, bringing the realities
of life into my darling's girlish dream.
"Can't you practice law in Foxcroft, and drive over there every morning?
People do."
"And because they do, and there are enough of them, I must plod along
in the ways that are made for me already. We can make pilgrimages
here, you know."
"I suppose so," said Bessie with a sigh.
Just then Fanny Kemble's clock in the tower above us struck the
hour--one, two, three.
"Bless me! so late? And there's that phaeton coming back over the hill