The Mettle of the Pasture | Page 7

boundaries of Spring, and on this
Sunday morning it filled the grounds of Isabel's home with early
warmth. Quickened by the heat, summoned by the blue, drenched with
showers and dews, all things which have been made repositories of the
great presence of Life were engaged in realizing the utmost that it
meant to them.
It was in the midst of this splendor of light and air, fragrance, colors,
shapes, movements, melodies and joys that Isabel, the loftiest
receptacle of life among them all, soon sat in a secluded spot,
motionless and listless with her unstanched and desperate wound.
Everything seemed happy but herself; the very brilliancy of the day
only deepened the shadow under which she brooded. As she had
slipped away from the house, she would soon have escaped from the
garden had there been any further retreat.
It was not necessary long to wait for one. Borne across the brown roofs
and red chimneys of the town and exploding in the crystal air above her
head like balls of mellow music, came the sounds of the first church
bells, the bells of Christ Church.
They had never conveyed other meaning to her than that proclaimed by
the town clock: they sounded the hour. She had been too untroubled

during her young life to understand their aged argument and invitation.
Held In the arms of her father, when a babe, she had been duly
christened. His death had occurred soon afterwards, then her mother's.
Under the nurture of a grandmother to whom religion was a
convenience and social form, she had received the strictest ceremonial
but in no wise any spiritual training. The first conscious awakening of
this beautiful unearthly sense had not taken place until the night of her
confirmation--a wet April evening when the early green of the earth
was bowed to the ground, and the lilies-of-the-valley in the yard had
chilled her fingers as she had plucked them (chosen flower of her
consecration); she and they but rising alike into their higher lives out of
the same mysterious Mother.
That night she had knelt among the others at the chancel and the bishop
who had been a friend of her father's, having approached her in the long
line of young and old, had laid his hands the more softly for his
memories upon her brow with the impersonal prayer:
"Defend, O Lord, this thy child with thy heavenly grace, that she may
continue thine forever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and
more, until she come unto thy Everlasting Kingdom."
For days afterwards a steady radiance seemed to Isabel to rest upon her
wherever she went, shed straight from Eternity. She had avoided her
grandmother, secluded herself from the closest companions, been very
thoughtful.
Years had elapsed since. But no experience of the soul is ever wasted
or effaceable; and as the sound of the bells now reached her across the
garden, they reawoke the spiritual impulses which had stirred within
her at confirmation. First heard whispering then, the sacred
annunciation now more eloquently urged that in her church, the hour of
real need being come, she would find refuge, help, more than earthly
counsellor.
She returned unobserved to the house and after quick simple
preparation, was on her way.

When she slipped shrinkingly into her pew, scarce any one had arrived.
Several women in mourning were there and two or three aged men. It is
the sorrowful and the old who head the human host in its march toward
Paradise: Youth and Happiness loiter far behind and are satisfied with
the earth. Isabel looked around with a poignant realization of the
broken company over into which she had so swiftly crossed.
She had never before been in the church when it was empty. How
hushed and solemn it waited in its noonday twilight--the Divine already
there, faithful keeper of the ancient compact; the human not yet arrived.
Here indeed was the refuge she had craved; here the wounded eye of
the soul could open unhurt and unafraid; and she sank to her knees with
a quick prayer of the heart, scarce of the lips, for Isabel knew nothing
about prayer in her own words--that she might have peace of mind
during these guarded hours: there would be so much time afterwards in
which to remember--so many years in which to remember!
How still it was! At first she started at every sound: the barely audible
opening and shutting of a pew door by some careful hand; the grating
of wheels on the cobblestones outside as a carriage was driven to the
entrance; the love-calls of sparrows building in the climbing oak
around the Gothic windows.
Soon, however, her ear became sealed to all outward disturbance. She
had fled to the church, driven by many