On the Church Steps | Page 2

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 r��sum�� 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 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