The Mettle of the Pasture | Page 8

young impulses, but among
them was the keen hope that her new Sorrow, which had begun to
follow her everywhere since she awoke, would wait outside when she
entered those doors: so dark a spirit would surely not stalk behind her
into the very splendor of the Spotless. But as she now let her eyes
wander down the isle to the chancel railing where she had knelt at
confirmation, where bridal couples knelt in receiving the benediction,
Isabel felt that this new Care faced her from there as from its appointed
shrine; she even fancied that in effect it addressed to her a solemn
warning:
"Isabel, think not to escape me in this place! It is here that Rowan must
seem to you most unworthy and most false; to have wronged you most
cruelly. For it was here, at this altar, that you had expected to kneel

beside him and be blessed in your marriage. In years to come, sitting
where you now sit, you may live to see him kneel here with another,
making her his wife. But for you, Isabel, this spot must ever mean the
renunciation of marriage, the bier of love. Then do not think to escape
me here, me, who am Remembrance."
And Isabel, as though a command had been laid upon her, with her eyes
fixed on the altar over which the lights of the stained glass windows
were joyously playing, gave herself up to memories of all the innocent
years that she had known Rowan and of the blind years that she had
loved him.
She was not herself aware that marriage was the only sacrament of
religion that had ever possessed interest for her. Recollection told her
no story of how even as a child she had liked to go to the crowded
church with other children and watch the procession of the brides--all
mysterious under their white veils, and following one and another so
closely during springs and autumns that in truth they were almost a
procession. Or with what excitement she had watched each walk out,
leaning on the arm of the man she had chosen and henceforth to be
called his in ail things to the end while the loud crash of the wedding
march closed their separate pasts with a single melody.
But there were mothers in the church who, attracted by the child's
expression, would say to each other a little sadly perhaps, that love and
marriage were destined to be the one overshadowing or overshining
experience in life to this most human and poetic soul.
After she had learned of Rowan's love for her and had begun to return
his love, the altar had thenceforth become the more personal symbol of
their destined happiness. Every marriage that she witnessed bound her
more sacredly to him. Only a few months before this, at the wedding of
the Osborns--Kate being her closest friend, and George Osborn being
Rowan's--he and she had been the only attendants; and she knew how
many persons in the church were thinking that they might be the next to
plight their vows; with crimsoning cheeks she had thought it herself.
Now there returned before Isabel's eyes the once radiant procession of

the brides--but how changed! And bitter questioning she addressed to
each! Had any such confession been made to any one of them--either
before marriage or afterwards--by the man she had loved? Was it for
some such reason that one had been content to fold her hands over her
breast before the birth of her child? Was this why another lived on, sad
young wife, motherless? Was this why in the town there were women
who refused to marry at all? So does a little knowledge of evil move
backward and darken for us even the bright years in which it had no
place.
The congregation were assembling rapidly. Among those who passed
further down were several of the girls of Isabel's set. How fresh and
sweet they looked as they drifted gracefully down the aisles this
summer morning! How light-hearted! How far away from her in her
new wretchedness! Some, after they were seated, glanced back with a
smile. She avoided their eyes.
A little later the Osborns entered, the bride and groom of a few months
before. Their pew was immediately in front of hers. Kate wore
mourning for her mother. As she seated herself, she lifted her veil
halfway, turned and slipped a hand over the pew into Isabel's. The
tremulous pressure of the fingers spoke of present trouble; and as Isabel
returned it with a quick response of her own, a tear fell from the hidden
eyes.
The young groom's eyes were also red and swollen, but for other
reasons; and he sat in the opposite end of the pew as far