Part 14 (2/2)
PRISCILLA.
The trained novel readers, those who have made a business of it (if any such should honor this poor little story with their attention), will glance down the opening paragraphs for a description of the heroine's tresses. The opening sentences of Miss Braddon are enough to show how important a thing a head of hair is in the getting up of a heroine for the popular market. But as my heroine is not a got-up one, and as I can not possibly remember even the color of her hair or her eyes as I recall her now, I fear I shall disappoint the professionals, who never feel that they have a complete heroine till the ”long waving tresses of raven darkness, reaching nearly to the ground, enveloping her as with a cloud,” have been artistically stuck on by the author. But be it known that I take Priscilla from memory, and not from imagination. And the memory of Priscilla, the best girl in the school, the most gifted, the most modest, the most gentle and true, is a memory too sacred to be trifled with. I would not make one hair light or dark, I would not change the shading of the eyebrows. Priscilla is Priscilla forever, to all who knew her. And as I can not tell the precise color of her hair and eyes, I shall not invent a shade for them. I remember that she was on the blond side of the grand division line. But she was not blond.
She was--Priscilla. I mean to say that since you never lived in that dear old-fogy Ohio River village of New Geneva, and since, consequently, you never knew our Priscilla, no words of mine can make you exactly understand her. Was she handsome? No--yes. She was ”jimber-jawed”--that is, her lower teeth shut a little outside her upper. Her complexion was not faultless. Her face would not bear criticism. And yet there is not one of her old schoolmates that will not vow that she was beautiful. And indeed she was. For she was Priscilla. And I never can make you understand it.
As Priscilla was always willing to oblige any one, it was only natural that Mrs. Leston should send for her to help entertain the marquis. It was a curious chance that threw the young Marquis d'Entremont for a whole summer into the society of our little village. His uncle, who was his guardian, a pious _abbe_, wis.h.i.+ng to remove him from Paris to get him out of socialistic influences, had sent him to New Orleans, consigned to the care of the great banking house of Challeau, Lafort & Company. Not liking to take the chances of yellow fever in the summer, he had resolved to journey to the North, and as Challeau, Lafort & Company had a correspondent in Henry Leston, the young lawyer, and as French was abundantly spoken in our Swiss village of New Geneva, what more natural than that they should dispatch the marquis to our pleasant town of vineyards, giving him a letter of introduction to their attorney, who fortunately spoke some book French. He had presented the letter, had been invited to dinner, and Priscilla Haines, who had learned French in childhood, though she was not Swiss, was sent for to help entertain the guest.
I can not but fancy that D'Entremont was surprised at meeting just such a girl as Priscilla in a rustic village. She was not abashed at finding herself face to face with a n.o.bleman, nor did she seem at all anxious to attract his notice. The vanity of the marquis must have been a little hurt at finding a lady that did not court his attention. But wounded vanity soon gave place to another surprise. Even Mrs. Leston, who understood not one word of the conversation between her husband, the marquis, and Priscilla, was watching for this second surprise, and did not fail to read it in D'Entremont's eyes. Here was a young woman who had read. She could admire Corinne, which was much in vogue in those days among English-speaking students of French; she could oppose Saint Simon. The Marquis d'Entremont had resigned himself to the ennui of talking to Swiss farmers about their vineyards, of listening to Swiss grandmothers telling stories of their childhood in Neufchatel and Vaud. But to find in this young village school-teacher one who could speak, and listen while he spoke, of his favorite writers, was to him very strange. Not that Priscilla had read many French books, for there were not many within her reach. But she had read Grimm's Correspondence, and he who reads this has heard the echo of many of the great voices in French literature. And while David Haines had lived his daughter had wanted nothing he could get to help her to the highest culture.
But I think what amazed the marquis most was that Priscilla showed no consciousness of the unusual character of her attainments. She spoke easily and naturally of what she knew, as if it were a matter of course that the teacher of a primary school should have read Corneille, and should be able to combat Saint Simonism. As the dinner drew to a close, Leston lifted his chair round to where his wife sat and interpreted the bright talk at the other side of the table.
I suspect that Saint Simon had lost some of his hold upon the marquis since his arrival in a country where life was more simple and the manner of thought more practical. But he dated the decline of his socialistic opinions from his discussion with Priscilla Haines.
The next Sunday morning he strolled out of the Le Vert House, breathing the sweet air perfumed with the blossoms of a thousand apple trees. For what yard is there in New Geneva that has not apple trees and grapevines? And every family in the village keeps a cow, and every cow wears a bell, and every bell is on a different key; so that the three things that penetrated the senses of the marquis on this Sunday morning were the high hills that stood sentinels on every hand about the valley in which New Geneva stood, the smell of the superabundant apple blossoms, and the _tinkle_ and _tankle_ and _tonkle_ of hundreds of bells on the cows grazing on the ”commons,” as the open lots were called. On this almost painfully quiet morning D'Entremont noticed the people going one way and another to the early Sunday schools in the three churches. Just as he came to the pump that stood in front of the ”public square” he met Priscilla. At her heels were ten ragged little ruffians, whom she was accustomed to have come to her house every Sunday morning and walk with her to Sunday school.
”You are then a Sister of Charity also,” he said in French, bowing low with sincere admiration as he pa.s.sed her. And then to himself the young marquis reflected: ”We Saint Simonists theorize and build castles in Spain for poor people, but we do not take hold of them.” He walked clear round the square, and then followed the steps of Priscilla into the little brick Methodist church which in that day had neither steeple nor bell nor anything churchlike about it except the two arched front windows. There was not even a fence to inclose it, nor an evergreen nor an ivy about it; only a few straggling black locusts. For the puritanism of New England was never so hard a puritanism as the Methodist puritanism of a generation ago in the West--a puritanism that forbade jewelry, that stripped the artificial flowers out of the bonnets of country girls, that expelled, and even yet expels, a country boy for looking with wonder at a man hanging head downward from a trapeze in a circus tent. No other church, not even the Quaker, ever laid its hand more entirely upon the whole life of its members. The dead hand of Wesley has been stronger than the living hand of any pope.
Upon the hard, open-backed, unpainted and unvarnished oak benches, which seemed devised to produce discomfort, sat the Sunday-school cla.s.ses, and upon one of these, near the door, D'Entremont sat down. He looked at the bare walls, at the white pulpit, at the carpetless floors, at the general ugliness of things, the box stove, which stood in the only aisle, the tin chandeliers with their half-burned candles, the eight-by-ten lights of gla.s.s in the windows, and he was favorably impressed. With a quick conscience he had often felt the frivolous emptiness of a worldly life, and had turned toward the religion of his uncle the _abbe_ only to turn away again antagonized by what seemed to him frivolity in the religions pomp that he saw. But here was a religion not only without the attractions of sensuous surrounding, but a religion that maintained its vitality despite a repelling plainness, not to say a repulsive ugliness, in its external forms. For could he doubt the force of a religious principle that had divested every woman in the little church of every ornament? Doubtless he felt the narrowness that could read the scriptural injunction so literally, but none could doubt the strength of a religious conviction that submitted to such self-denial. And then there was Priscilla, with all her gifts, sitting in the midst of her boys, gathered from that part of the village known as ”Slabtown.” Yes, there must be something genuine in this religious life, and its entire contrast to all that the marquis had known and grown weary of attracted him.
As eleven o'clock drew on, the little church filled with people. The men sat on one side of the aisle and the women on the other. The old brethren and sisters, and generally those who prayed in prayer meeting and spoke in love feast, sat near the front, many of them on the cross seats near the pulpit, which were thence said by scoffers to be the ”Amen corners.” Any one other than a leader of the hosts of Israel would as soon have thought of taking a seat in the pulpit as on one of these chief seats in the synagogue. The marquis sat still and watched the audience gather, while one of the good brethren led the congregation in singing
”When I can read my t.i.tle clear,”
which hymn was the usual voluntary at the opening of service. Then the old minister said, ”Let us continue the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d by singing the hymn on page 554.” He ”lined” the hymn--that is, he read each couplet before it was sung. With the coming in of hymn books and other newfangled things the good old custom of ”lining the hymn” has disappeared. But on that Sunday morning the Marquis d'Entremont thought he had never heard anything more delightful than these simple melodies sung thus l.u.s.tily by earnest voices. The reading of each couplet by the minister before it was sung seemed to him a sort of recitative. He knew enough of English to find that the singing was hopeful and triumphant.
Wearied with philosophy and _blase_ with the pomp of the world, he wished that he had been a villager in New Geneva, and that he might have had the faith to sing of the
”--land of pure delight Where saints immortal reign,”
with as much earnestness as his friend Priscilla on the other side of the aisle. In the prayer that followed D'Entremont noticed that all the church members knelt, and that the hearty _amens_ were not intoned, but were as spontaneous as the rest of the service. After reverently reading a chapter the old minister said: ”Please sing without lining,
”'A charge to keep I have,'”
and then the old time of ”Kentucky” was sung with animation, after which came the sermon, of which the marquis understood but few words, though he understood the pantomime by which the venerable minister represented the return of the prodigal and the welcome he received.
When he saw the tears in the eyes of the hearers, and heard the half-repressed ”Bless the Lord!” of an old brother or sister, and saw them glance joyfully at one another's faces as the sermon went on, he was strangely impressed with the genuineness of the feeling.
But the cla.s.s meeting that followed, to which he remained, impressed him still more. The venerable Scotchman who led it had a face that beamed with sweetness and intelligence. It was fortunate that the marquis saw so good a specimen. In fact, Priscilla trembled lest Mr.
Boreas, the stern, hard-featured ”exhorter,” should have been invited to lead. But as the sweet-faced old leader called upon one and another to speak, and as many spoke with streaming eyes, D'Entremont quivered with sympathy. He was not so blind that he could not see the sham and cant of some of the speeches, but in general there was much earnestness and truth. When Priscilla rose in her turn and spoke, with downcast eyes, he felt the beauty and simplicity of her religious life. And he rightly judged that from the soil of a cult so severe there must grow some n.o.ble and heroic lives. Last of all the cla.s.s leader reached the marquis, whom he did not know.
”Will our strange brother tell us how it is with him to-day?” he asked.
Priscilla trembled. What awful thing might happen when a cla.s.s leader invited a marquis, who could speak no English, and who was a disciple of Saint Simon, to tell his religious experience, was more than she could divine. If the world had come to an end in consequence of such a concatenation, I think she would hardly have been surprised. But nothing of the sort occurred. To her astonishment the marquis rose and said:
”Is it that any one can speak French?”
A brother who was a member of one of the old Swiss families volunteered his services as interpreter, and D'Entremont proceeded to tell them how much he had been interested in the exercises; that it was the first time he had ever been in such a meeting, and that he wished he had the simple faith which they showed.
<script>