On the Church Steps | Page 3

again. Hurry, Charlie! don't let them see us. They'll think that we've
been here all the time." And Bessie plunged madly down the hill, and
struck off into the side-path that leads into the Lebanon road. The last
vibrations of the bell were still trembling on the air as I caught up with
her again.
But again the teasing mood of the morning had come over her. Quite
out of breath with the run, as we sat down to rest on the little porch of
Mrs. Sloman's cottage she said, very earnestly, "But you haven't once
said it."
"Said what, my darling?"
"That you are glad that Fanny is going abroad."
"Nonsense! Why should I be glad?"

"Are you sorry, then?"
If I had but followed my impulse then, and said frankly that I was, and
why I was! But Mrs. Sloman was coming through the little hall: I heard
her step. Small time for explanation, no time for reproaches. And I
could not leave Bessie, on that morning of all others, hurt or angry, or
only half convinced.
"No, I am not sorry," I said, pulling down a branch of honeysuckle, and
making a loop of it to draw around her neck. "It is nothing, either way."
"Then say after me if it is nothing--feel as I feel for one minute, won't
you?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Say, after me, then, word for word, 'I am glad, very glad, that Fanny
Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side for
worlds!"
And like a fool, a baby, I said it, word for word, from those sweet
smiling lips: "I am glad, very glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to sail in
October. I would not have her stay on this side for worlds!"
CHAPTER II.
The next day was Sunday, and I was on duty at an early hour, prepared
to walk with Bessie to church. My darling was peculiar among women
in this: her church-going dress was sober-suited; like a little gray nun,
almost, she came down to me that morning. Her dress, of some soft
gray stuff, fell around her in the simplest folds, a knot of brown ribbon
at her throat, and in her hat a gray gull's wing.
I had praised the Italian women for the simplicity of their church-attire:
their black dresses and lace veils make a picturesque contrast with the
gorgeous ceremonials of the high altar. But there was something in this
quiet toilet, so fresh and simple and girl-like, that struck me as the one
touch of grace that the American woman can give to the best even of

foreign taste. Not the dramatic abnegation indicated by the black dress,
but the quiet harmony of a life atune.
Mrs. Sloman was ready even before Bessie came down. She was a
great invalid, although her prim and rigid countenance forbore any
expression save of severity. She had no pathos about her, not a touch.
Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been--and Bessie dimly
hinted that they were severe to agony at times--they were resolutely
shut within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early
morning, her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive
cheeks, she looked like a lady abbess--as cold, as unyielding and as
hard.
There was small sympathy between the aunt and niece, but a great deal
of painstaking duty on the one side, and on the other the habit of
affection which young girls have for the faces they have always known.
Mrs. Sloman had been at pains to tell me, when my frequent visits to
her cottage made it necessary that I should in some fashion explain to
her as to what I wanted there, that her niece, Bessie Stewart, was in
nowise dependent on her, not even for a home. "This cottage we rent in
common. It was her father's desire that her property should not
accumulate, and that she should have nothing at my hands but
companionship, and"--with a set and sickly smile--"advice when it was
called for. We are partners in our expenses, and the arrangement can be
broken up at any moment."
Was this all? No word of love or praise for the fair young thing that had
brightened all her household in these two years that Bessie had been
fatherless?
I believe there was love and appreciation, but it was not Mrs. Sloman's
method to be demonstrative or expansive. She approved of the
engagement, and in her grim way had opened an immediate battery of
household ledgers and ways and means. Some idea, too, of making me
feel easy about taking Bessie away from her, I think, inclined her to
this business-like manner. I tried to show her, by my own manner, that
I understood her without words,