EVERY SATURDAY. A JOURNAL OF CHOICE READING. VOL. II.] SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1874. AT. THE PIN AGNES spoke in utter self-forgetfulness, and the instant she was conscious of what she had done she was frightened, and all the more that the rector of Dufferin, looking her steadfastly in the face, made no reply. He was too amazed to answer. This was not the first log-house in the woods into which he had ventured. Hitherto he had met with no exceptions in their class of inhabitants. Beneath such roofs he had found in dustry, honesty, rude intelligence, which accepted with silent and becoming awe the lofty instruction proffered by their priestly caller. In the same spirit he entered this house. This fair-haired child inspired him with more than an ordinary interest, therefore with proportionate pastoral peremptoriness he intended to insist upon her being brought forth from this wilderness to the altar instructions of the church. Whatever his intentions on entering, they had faded and gone. He was pervaded with the startling consciousness that he, the rector, had been receiving instruction; and from whom? A woman! The milliner of Dufferin ! He was dumb with the shock of this utterly new sensation. He, a man, a priest, taught by a woman! Even while feeling it he was ashamed of his internal resentment; for through it all his clear brain said, "If you are so much wiser and greater than she, why does any word of hers trouble you?" Surely no human being could look less aggressive than she, a small, slight woman, whose clear brown eyes seemed to overflow with a sad tenderness, and whose presence pervaded him with a sense of its gentleness. It was this gentleness that disarmed him, and made him ashamed of his own inward assumptions. "Will you excuse me for a moment?" she asked, and as she left the room she left him free to examine it. He knew of no drawing-room in Dufferin which bore equal evidence of such ideal personal taste in its adornment as the low-ceiled room of this log-house. Its walls, covered with pale gray cambric, were hung close with pictures, chiefly sketches from nature in oil and water-colors, in rustic frames; while around them and above ran delicate vines from the woods, festooned to the ceiling with wreaths of autumn leaves of the most intense carmine and gold. Bouquets of ferns, maiden-hair, and scarlet berries were set in vases on brackets covered with pale green lichen. A carpet of gray and green covered the floor, and before the small 1 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by H. O. HOUGHTox & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. [No. 17. back window, which looked out upon the Tarn, stood a cottage piano. "Do you play?" asked Athel Dane of Vida, who sat in the open front door. "A little. My mamma is teaching me. You ask my mamma to sing, please;" leaning forward with a confidential air. You never heard anybody sing so sweet; her voice is just like the whistling thrush that goes so". and a long, long note, piercing, sad, and sweet, floated out from the girl's throat as if from a bird's. "Why, Vida!" said her mother, that moment entering with a tray in her hands. "I'm making your note, mamma; it's so sweet I knew "- the rector would like it, she was going to say, when she flushed with a sudden consciousness of her temerity. Agnes set her tray upon a stand, and drew it before the stranger. It held glasses of cold spring water, and of raspberry shrub; biscuit, yellow butter, creamy cheese, jam, and a loaf of caraway cake. "The friend with whom I live is not at home," said Agnes," but nothing would disturb her more than to know that any one rode all the way from Dufferin to the Pinnacle and back without eating in her house. She will lament that she was not at home to cook you did eat something before a supper; so I trust you will let me tell her that you you left." Her tone implied that it would be a great favor if he would condescend to partake of what she had brought him. She had failed in reverence to the preacher, he was keenly conscious of that, but she was ready to minister to the stranger; that at least was womanly, and Christian. Thus the silent sisters of the infant church ministered to St. Paul himself. Simply from force of habit he felt the impulse to say so, in his most priestly tones; but something in the unconscious face before him restrained the professional remark, as something incongruous. It was too evident that she attached no importance whatever to the act of hospitality. Young, healthy, and hungry, like many another "divine," for the time he quite sunk the conscious greatness of his office in the hearty satisfaction of his stomach. His long ride had sharpened his appetite. The food before him was as pure and delicious as food could be; and there was a difference, he felt it in spite of himself, - a difference that was inexpressibly delightful between partaking of food here in this home-like room, in the serene presence of this mother and child, and eating at the regulation table, in the fly-infested dining-room of the Dufferin Hotel. "You must be very fond of music, it is so unusual to see a piano so far in the country," he said; "so far in the woods," he thought, between a bit of biscuit and a spoonful of jam. "Music is much to me," said Agnes, " and it was necessary to have a piano when my little girl became old enough to take lessons." How many days and weeks of extra work were necessary to earn the money to pay for that piano, Agnes did not say. "The note your little daughter has given me as yours quite makes me wish to hear the original." "You have no expectation, I trust, that it can sound to you as it does to her?" "That would be scarcely possible," was the honest answer. 'But you will really do me another kindness," bowing over the waiter, "if you will give me a little music. I often think how much better sermons I could write if I could always hear the organ, as I do sometimes through my study door." Agnes went to the piano, and in a moment more her voice, sweet with all home and holy emotion, filled the room with the hymn of "The Yearning Spirit," whose last lines are these: "Not by deeds that the crowd applauds, Not by works that give the world renown, Canst thou win and wear the immortal crown. "Daily struggling, though enclosed and lonely, And truly loving, thou canst truly live." "Is that your gospel?" asked Athel Dane. "It is a part of our Lord's gospel, is it not?" said Agnes. Her voice and her words went with him through his long return ride. Who was this woman, so strong, so simple, so different from all others in her impersonal unconsciousness. The Dufferin milliner? Preposterous! If she had been that, what was she not, that was more! No one before ever met him as she met him, with such gentle kindness to the person, such slight reverence for the priest. No one ever before made him at once so conscious and so ashamed of his own self-importance. How superfluous was assumption, to a woman so unconscious of her inferiority in being a woman that she was equally oblivious to his superiority in being a man! It never seemed to occur to her once, that she as a woman was bound to receive the instructions of a priest, nor was there the slightest assumption in her manner. "She simply spoke to me as one soul might speak to another, if it were unclothed upon of mortality," he said. A week had passed since this visit to the Pinnacle, and the Rev. Athel Dane had arrived at the positive conviction, at last acknowledged to himself, that he desired to make another. Of course complex feelings entered into the desire, a part of which he eagerly acknowledged, and another part of which he as blindly ignored. He was haunted by a suspicion that as a clergyman he did not come off victorious. He should have impressed upon the mind of this woman a positive conviction of her duty to attend more faithfully to the ordinances of the church, and to a preparation of her child for confirmation. Above all he should have reproved her positively for saying that as a class she did not like clergymen. Such a remark was a reflection on the sacred office. He should not have forgotten his priestly state so far as to have been moved by the tones of her voice and the unction of her spirit, as at heart he knew that he was. He must visit her again, if only to remove such an unfortunate impression from her mind, if he had left it there; and to perform his parochial duty as such, with out a flaw. It was a great pity that such an interesting child should grow up without the advantages of systematic instruction. He should propose that she be sent to Dufferin to school, or that he should visit the Pinnacle himself as her instructor. Meanwhile, without having received any hints of the lady's taste in the matter, he was looking over his books to find something at once edifying and interesting for her reading. He had selected "The True Churchman," a manual of church duties, a volume of Whately's Sermons, and, as an offset against such serious reading, "The Annals of a Quiet City," which, though not doctrinal, he considered suggestive and devout. She is an exceptional woman but even she will admit, after she has read them, that not a woman on earth could have written these books," he said to himself as he carefully dusted these volumes and strapped them before his departure for the Pinnacle. The tattle of Stella Moon never penetrated the exalted sphere wherein the Rev. Athel Dane revolved. If it did, Ulm Neil long before had vanished from the postoffice whose letters Stella inspected. The name never issued from its mail-bags after the reception of the check which paid for "Basil: A Boy." From that day all matter directed to Ulm Neil had been sent to the Lake, more than twenty miles away, and in an opposite direction. Thus the name had no association to the Dufferin rector outside of "The Annals of a Quiet City." The day was divine enough to have drawn every creature of God out into his atmosphere. It was one of those superlative days which suffuse sometimes this land of the north, to show us what the air of Paradise may be. It was a dreamy day of fragrant warmth and misty sunshine, its tints all pink and azure and silver. The white clouds, massed against the pale blue of the sky, were flushed with the delicate rose which touches the lining of sea-shells. The mountain faces shone withdrawn and dim through folded silvery veils, and the earth itself, with its tints of green and gold and carmine, seemed afloat in a circumfluent sea of silver. The spell of the day was too potent for Agnes. She laid down the task that seemed endless. She gave Vida and herself a holiday. At the end of the path which led from the house, within the shelter of the willows at the edge of the Tarn, were two boats. One belonged to Evelyn, in which on idle days she would sit for hours angling for trout in the centre of the Tarn; the other, smaller and stancher, Jim Dare built expressly for Agnes and Vida. In this, to-day, the mother and child floated out upon the placid water. Once in the centre of the lake they looked up to the profile on the Pinnacle. It was the rarest of mountain profiles, that it exacted no tribute from the imagination. There it was, indubitably wrought by the elements in immemorial stone, the clear, grave profile of the Father of his Country. Washington's forehead, nose, mouth, and chin were set there, fronting storm and sunshine, high on the mountain-side. Above it rose the serried turrets of the Pinnacle, while on the other side, down to the water's edge, spread that opulent garniture of leaf and bloom which marks the foliage of the north. From the base to the summit of the Pinnacle now the birches, maples, and poplars held their flaming torches into the changeless faces of the firs. Agnes rowed slowly out to the Pinnacle. Here was a place prepared for them. A path had been cut through the undergrowth to a covert in the side of the mountain. Meanwhile Evelyn, as she rowed slowly across the mile of water, was busy taking every atom of clerical starch out of the gentleman whom she was conveying. It was due entirely to her that he was in the boat at all. When he proposed to leave the books for Mrs. Darcy with his compliments, Evelyn broke out :Oh, Mister Dane, you jest go an' tell her yourself! 'Tain't nothin', jest goin' across the pond. She's gone over to the Pinnerkel to spend the hull day, an' hes more time to visit, a sight, than if she wus tu hum. An' it would be a burnin' shame for ye to ride all the way from the street fur nothin'." It was a natural room with an open front facing the Dares, the countrymen on the road, the shop-keepers Tarn. Its sides, back, and roof were of rock. Here at Dufferin, or its “ gentlemen," as distant moving were rustic seats and a table. Here for the five sum-images. mers and autumns gone, Agnes had come to think long, long thoughts, and to make a holiday for her child; and for Evelyn and Jim when they wanted one. There was a quality of mystic peace in this day which made even Vida silent. It was born of a ripened earth, and of elements in equipoise. There was a brooding warmth, a pervasive sweetness, in the air. It was all penetrated with the exuding honey of the spruces, and the floating fragrance of the ferns. No house was in sight, and the little lake under the Pinnacle seemed shut in alone with the mother-earth and her tribes. Its crinkling waves ran up and broke into glittering shreds upon the slender lances of the reedy grasses that lined its shores. On three sides it was shut in by high walls of foliage. To the south the peaks of Mount Norton, Mount Averill, and Mount John were notched against the sky. Above them pink-white clouds were sailing like a procession of swans. Within, the presumptuous trout spread out their widening rings upon the blue-green lake, and leaped defiantly up into the sunshine. A solitary kingfisher shot beneath the water after one as his prey, and rose again with a shriek of disappointment. Across the Tarn a loon was calling, with a cry so human that Vida answered, "What do you want, Mrs. Loon? Do you want my seed-cakes?" Thus Athel Dane (not the rector) allowed himself to be led, he never knew just how, down to the water and into the boat, by Evelyn. And now that she had him out in mid-water, in the very heart of the "fishing-ground," she was enlivening him with some of the biggest of her trout stories. 66 Many's the mornin' I've sot in this very spot, stun still, hours runnin', waitin' a bite. 'Twasn't so wunst. I caught forty pound right here one mornin' afore ten o'clock, without stirrin' my boat an inch; an' one feller was a three-pounder. That was fifteen years ago, afore all Dufferin come here a-fishin'." "I should think by the way they jump that the pond must be full of them now," observed her listener. 66 So 'tis; but, my! them trout know jest as well as I do, that 'taint fishin' time, or they'd never flounder up like that! no kingfisher an' no hook, though stuck full of angle-worms to the end, ken ketch 'em now. Why, it's a' most spawnin' time. They're jest havin' their last frolic afore they go into the spawnin' beds. By the fust of October 'twill be agin the law to tech one on 'em, providin' you could; but you couldn't; they're mighty knowin', I can tell ye.” As they drew so near to the Pinnacle that the two figures sitting by its room of rock could be distinguished, Athel Dane felt suddenly overcome at the thought of what he was doing, and a mighty impulse to turn back struck against the mightier impulse to go forward. He had intended the call as a purely clerical one, on a lady who had quietly said to him that as a class she did not like clergymen, and if he had felt some misgivings in calling upon her in his priestly function, as a gentleman he could offer no excuse whatever for following, to a retreat like this, a lady whom he had seen but once. He had these conflicting thoughts in his mind, and the books he had brought still strapped to his shoulder, as Evelyn's rude barge pushed in among the reeds, and Athel Dane could do nothing but step out upon shore. Agnes arose from her seat to receive her visitor, who, as he looked into the room of rock and to the embattled steep above it, said: "One of God's sanctuaries. I am glad to find you in it." "I am so often found in it that it may be called my chosen one," she answered. "I welcome to it now the rector of Dufferin.” Just the reply to prompt a priestly homily from said rector. Strange it seemed to himself afterwards that he did not improve the chance it gave. But he did not. The peace of the place, the mesmerism of the day, had already overtaken him. In such an air, under such a sky, in such a presence, preaching seemed an impertinence, and the tones of his own voice sounded alien and hard, and repelled him. He wished that Evelyn would stop telling stories of the smugglers who used to hide their goods in this cave behind the rocks; and as Mrs. Darcy was beyond all question remarkably refined, how could she smile so gently and listen so attentively to these stories, told as she must be aware in a very coarse voice? The Rev. Athel Dane inwardly chafed and fumed under it. He forgot the fact that her being there at all was an act of kindness to himself quite unmerited. Her sudden thought of "dinner" was extremely welcome to him, and for a reason entirely distinct from the prospect of eating her good things. How could he talk of books, of the church, of anything that he wanted to talk about, with that clarion voice ringing out its vernacular in his ears. "Jest stay as long as you hev a mind tu," said Evelyn, seeing that the Dufferin rector had not the slightest intention of going, and judging from the size of the books which he unstrapped from his shoulder, and the bigness of the "bumps" that she called "language," that he had unlimited wisdom, if not religion, to propound. "Jest you stay, an' I'll go back and cook ye a nice dinner, an' when it's smokin' hot I'll send Jim over to row you back. Jim can row anything. Why, he jest come over here for this boat that some feller had tugged off, t'other day, in a sap-pan! What d'ye think of that? I don't believe another livin' critter could hev swum a sap-pan; he can't swim a stroke, nuther, hisse'f, an' he'd 'a' ben drownded sure, if he couldn't 'a' kep' the pan from tippin'." And in this glow of mother - triumph Evelyn departed to achieve her culinary victories. There was no time to be lost. Jim Dare might appear with the boat any moment. Thus without preliminaries Athel Dane hastened to offer the loan of the books to this woman, who, he felt sure, must be in a state of starvation for reading of any sort above the Farmer's Almanac. Poor fellow! He could not help the tone of condescension and patronage which would come into his voice from sheer habit; he did not know they were in it now. He only knew it was pleasant to be able to lend this interesting but benighted woman some proper food for her mind and soul. "This manual I trust you will find very salutary," he said. 66 I pray that it may tend to the quickening of your spirit, and to the upbuilding of your life in a more lively faith; and these sermons of a true servant of the church, I trust that they may arouse in you a desire to listen to the spoken word from the lips of a living preacher; and here is a little book quite opposite in form but consonant in spirit - a favorite of mine." Athel Dane was speaking now. "Indeed, I may say that it has a fascination for me in this, - that without actually portraying our northern scenery, it in an indescribable way seems to be perfectly familiar with it, and to overflow with the quality of this atmosphere," he said, expanding his lungs and taking in an extra draught of the spiced wine of the autumnal air. "I hope it will afford you half the pleasure it has given me," he added in a tone which indicated that said "half" would fill the full measure of her capacity. "I consider this a delicious bit of English. May I read it to you?" he asked, opening the book where he had placed a mark. "I remember when I read it first it seemed to me that I had never found one modern English page which had given me equal satisfaction;" and as if silence gave consent, in a deep, monotonous voice, but with clear, sympathetic intonation, Athel Dane proceeded to read. How vividly it brought back to Agnes the wintry day, void, desolate, into whose chill air it came from out the silence of her soul. If with repressed yet sure resilience it struck her now, through the reader's voice, it was because her soul's impalpable life thrilled the mute page, a quickening verity. When he ceased reading she was silent. He felt a sense of disappointment. Why did he expect a woman, any woman, to feel to the quick the subtle suggestiveness, or even the unpretending beauty, of the page that he had read? In the same instant he was conscious that this woman's silence was more acceptable, at least less tormenting, to him, than the average woman's little parrot shriek of: "Oh, how beautiful!" or, Perfectly lovely, Mr. Dane!" Her silence proved her, so far, an exception to her race. 66 "Does this page suggest anything to you?" he inquired in quired in a hopeless tone. "Yes that the person who wrote it had learned life through sharp inward experience." "Do you perceive nothing-nothing higher, in it, than experience?" "Perhaps; that is the quality in it that I feel the most." "Strange. Its subjectivity and suggestiveness are the qualities in it which impress me." "Are not these qualities likely to be the sequence of profound inward experience?" "Not more than of intuition and of insight, I should say. You speak of 'the person.' Surely you have no doubt a man wrote it?" "Are you sure, Mr. Dane?" "Certainly I am." "Why are you sure?" "The book is full of indubitable proof. It would be impossible for any woman to understand the interior working of a man's mind as this writer understands it. No woman can comprehend a man, to say nothing of embodying such a comprehension in fit language. This single page I have read is proof in itself that it could never have been written by a woman. It is womanly to be tender, but it is for man only to be strong in his tenderness; "with an air of magnificence. "Thank you. I shall remember your definitions, and think them over while reading the book. It will be pleasant to read it by the light you have given me." Surely this was a compliment. Yet under it he felt, rather than perceived by any look or tone, that this woman already held an opinion of her own concerning the book, which his did not move in the slightest; and the feeling annoyed him into silence. He looked across the Tarn to the opening in the willows where he expected every moment to see Jim Dare appear, and feeling that his time was short, made a sudden plunge toward the subject really uppermost in his mind. "Does your little daughter attend school, Mrs. Darcy?" "No. She has never been to school in her life." "Do you object to her attending the academy on Dufferin Street? "Only as I object to her attending the church there. It is too distant for her to go without her mother, and I have not yet been able to bring myself to a willingness to live on Dufferin Street; though I may be compelled to do so. Thus far I have been able to teach her myself. But I am so fully taxed in other directions that as the demands of her education increase, I'm afraid I shall not have the time or strength for the study which I shall find necessary for her sake." "Do you object to her having a teacher here?" "It is the desire of my heart, but it is impossible. No one this side of Dufferin could teach her the higher branches. No teacher in Dufferin would ride nearly forty miles in a day for a single pupil." "I would." "You! The rector of Dufferin! The clergyman of St. John's!" "You say that a teacher for your little girl is the desire of your heart. I trust you have no serious objection to me for such an office. I assure you it is one to which I am quite accustomed. I taught classes of seminary girls in Latin and mathematics during my college course. It increased my allowance and never taxed me at all. Now my one recreation is my long country rides. The longer ones have always needed an object outside of myself. I can find one here. Say I come every Monday. Monday is a very desultory day with me, always. I'm restless and want to be off. I can never settle myself in my study till the reaction from the Sabbath is past. I can give her lessons for the entire week, and on Monday ride over to hear her recite, and to instruct her. Nothing could be easier." "Nor more delightful," sighed little yellow-hair serenely, murmuring to herself in a way that saved her words from all sound of impertinence. "Vida, do you hear what this kind gentleman offers to do for you? Thank him, my darling, as your mother does." Thus began one of those close personal friendships between a man and a woman placed amid exceptional circumstances, whose ethics make a chosen study of psychologists, and an open question to moralists, but which in experience prove to be as opposite in influence as the beings who enter into their compacts; the result in weal or woe to such beings depending utterly on the quality of their natures and the measure of their grace. In time, and not very long time, either, the Monday of each week came to be the day of days at the Pinnacle. Each one was an event in the slow, still tide of days hitherto marked by no epochs; days all alike in their silence, that knew no gradation of tint or outline, save only what the seasons gave them. Now Monday was the day on which Evelyn spread her choicest viands. Was there any compound of eggs and cream, of meats and spices, and home fruits, too good for the rector of Dufferin? Evelyn thought not, and therefore ministered unto him in all the unctuous richness of this faith. It was the day for which all other days seemed made to the child Vida, in her fresh frock, with her carefully conned tasks, studied faithfully every day but Sunday, for this day, when, with fear and trembling, yet with inward delight, they were recited to the ever godlike and adored teacher. Privately it was Vida's cherished opinion that no little girl ever had such a grand god of a teacher as she had. But we do not forget that Vida was a child of the woods, and never before, since she was old enough for conscious observation and comment, had been brought in near contact with a gentleman in breeding and "Yes, mamma. Please let him teach me. I will culture. learn my lessons so good." "Better than for your mother?" "Yes, I'll be so ashamed not, for him! You love me, mamma, no matter how bad I do. Of course the rector will never love me," with a sigh, "but I will study as well as ever I can, if he don't," heroically. "I love all good little girls," said the aged gentleman of twenty-seven benignly. "I am not good," said Vida hopelessly. "I pulled my cat's tail yesterday because I was angry. I was mad at her for ketchin' a little yellow-bird. And this morning I pinched my dolly's nose because she wouldn't stand up like a lady. I've — a dreadful temper; I feel it in my throat like a ball, when Jim teazes me. Then Evelyn calls me a little crosspatch," bitterly; "but mamma never does. She always loves me. I like you better than any one I ever saw except mamma. If you will teach me I will learn everything you tell me to, as well as ever I can." - A pang shot through Agnes' heart at Vida's words, "I like you better than any one I ever saw except mamma." Alas! that her sylvan child, to whom this man wore the semblance of a god, should ever have uttered them to any one but her own father. A little child led them. Vida had her way. The rector of Dufferin had his also. Agnes acquiesced with deep gratitude and many misgivings over the state of obligation in which she was placing herself, to one almost a stranger; obligation which money only could never annul, for it was impossible for her to be insensible to the inestimable advantage to her child of the very thorough instruction which the rector of Dufferin was capable of imparting. By the time Jim Dare pushed off his boat from the other side of the Tarn, Vida had fixed fate with her prattling tongue. More and more this Monday came to be a white day to Agnes. It brought her the one voice that spoke to her from the great outer world of thought and action which she had left behind. By degrees, imperceptibly it brought her more, -a something of whose possession at last she became conscious with a deep thankfulness, mental companionship. Till she knew that this was hers again, she did not know how much she had missed it out of her life. She had appreciated to the fulness of tender gratitude the good gifts that had been hers, the shelter, the sympathy, the affection which environed her, rude though they often were in their manifestations. She had not allowed herself to think, even, of anything more as ever again to be her own. Thus when it came to her unsought, this interchange of congenial thoughts, this real companionship and communion of mind with one whose chances for culture had so far transcended her own, whose range of exact knowledge was so much broader than hers could ever be, it seemed to her a direct boon. She was the more grateful when she knew it, because she did not come into the conscious possession of any such good at once. While at first she felt extremely grateful to the Rev. Athel Dane, he personally repelled her, nevertheless. He was very wise, she knew, for so young a man; but he would be very much more agreeable, she thought, if he could seem considerably less conscious of it. His mannerism of attire and of address silently repelled her severely fastidicus taste. She thought it self-conscious if not self-conceited. She wanted to be charitable, but what did his remarks express if not intense spiritual pride? Was this the essence of the man, or the result of his special training? Was it conscious self-satisfaction, or unconscious ignorance of his true self? She did not know |