Part 5 (1/2)
”Art thou so forgetful of the G.o.d-Man, who at this time carried the burden of all our sins?”
”Oh! You mean it is Lent, Adam?”
”Yes! It is Lent!”
”I was never taught to regard it.”
”Yet none keep Lent more strictly than Conall Ragnor.”
”A wife does not always adopt her husband's ideas. I had a father, Adam, uncles and cousins and friends. None of them kept Lent. Dost thou expect me to be wiser than all my kindred?”
”I do.”
”Let us cease this talk. It will come to nothing.”
”Then good-bye.”
”Be not hard on Sunna. One side only, has been heard.”
”As kindly as may be, I will do right.”
Then Adam went away, but he left Rahal very unhappy. She had disobeyed her husband's advice and she could not help asking herself if she would have been as easily persuaded to tell a similar story about her own child. ”Thora is a school girl yet,” she thought, ”but she is just entering the zone of temptation.”
In the midst of this reflection Thora came into the room. Her mother looked into her lovely face with a swift pang of fear. It was radiant with a joy not of this world. A light from an interior source illumined it; a light that wreathed with smiles the pure, childlike lips. ”Oh, if she could always remain so young, and so innocent! Oh, if she never had to learn the sorrowful lessons that love always teaches!”
Thus Rahal thought and wished. She forgot, as she did so, that women come into this world to learn the very lessons love teaches, and that unless these lessons are learned, the soul can make no progress, but must remain undeveloped and uninstructed, even until the very end of this session of its existence.
CHAPTER III
ARIES THE RAM
O Christ whose Cross began to bloom With peaceful lilies long ago; Each year above Thy empty tomb More thick the Easter garlands grow.
O'er all the wounds of this sad strife Bright wreathes the new immortal life.
Thus came the word: Proclaim the year of the Lord!
And so he sang in peace; Under the yoke he sang, in the shadow of the sword, Sang of glory and release.
The heart may sigh with pain for the people pressed and slain, The soul may faint and fall: The flesh may melt and die--but the Voice saith, Cry!
And the Voice is more than all.--CARL SPENCER.
It was Sat.u.r.day morning and the next day was Easter Sunday. The little town of Kirkwall was in a state of happy, busy excitement, for though the particular house cleaning of the great occasion was finished, every housewife was full laden with the heavy responsibility of feeding the guests sure to arrive for the Easter service. Even Rahal Ragnor had both hands full. She was expecting her sister-in-law, Madame Barbara Brodie by that day's boat, and n.o.body ever knew how many guests Aunt Barbara would bring with her. Then if her own home was not fully prepared to afford them every comfort, she would be sure to leave them at the Ragnor house until all was in order. Certainly she had said in her last letter that she was not ”going to be imposed upon, by anyone this spring”--and Thora reminded her mother of this fact.
”Dost thou indeed believe thy aunt's a.s.surances?” asked Rahal. ”Hast thou not seen her break them year after year? She will either ask some Edinburgh friend to come back to Kirkwall with her, or she will pick up someone on the way home. Is it not so?”
”Aunt generally leaves Edinburgh alone. It is the people she picks up on her way home that are so uncertain. Dear Mother, can I go now to the cathedral? The flowers are calling me.”
”Are there many flowers this year?”