The Chautauqua Girls At Home.
by Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden.
CHAPTER I.
TREADING ON NEW GROUND.
THAT last Sabbath of August was a lovely day; it was the first Sabbath that our girls had spent at home since the revelation of Chautauqua. It seemed lovely to them. "The world looks as though it was made over new in the night," Eurie had said, as she threw open her blinds, and drew in whiffs of the sweet, soft air. And the church, whither these girls had so often betaken themselves on summer mornings, just like this one--how _could_ two or three weeks have changed it? They could not feel that it was the same building.
Hitherto it had been to them simply the First Church; grander, by several degrees, than any other church in the city, having the finest choir, and the finest organ, and the most elegant carpets, and making the grandest floral display of all the temples, as became the First Church, of course; but to-day, this glowing, glorious August day, it was something infinitely above and beyond all this; it was the visible temple of the invisible G.o.d, _their_ Saviour, and they were going up to worship--aye, really and truly to _worship_. They, in their different ways, according to their very different natures, felt this and were thrilled with it as their feet trod the aisles. People can feel a great many things, and not show them to the casual observer. Sitting in their respective pews, they looked in no sense different from the way they had looked on a hundred different Sabbaths before this.
Ruth Erskine, in the corner of her father"s pew, attired, as she had often been before, in the most delicate and exquisite of summer silks, with exactly the right shade of necktie, gloves and sash, to set off the beauty of the dress, with the soft and delicate laces about her white throat, for which she was especially noted, looked not one whit different from the lady who sat there three weeks before. You wouldn"t have known that her heart was singing for joy.
Flossy Shipley, aglow with elegance, as she always was, looked the same airy b.u.t.terfly that had flitted in and out of that church on many a summer day before; and Marion, in her corner in the gallery, was simply the grave, somewhat weary-looking school-teacher at one of the wards--"a girl with infidel tendencies," that is all the great congregation knew about her; in fact, comparatively few of them knew even that.
Eurie Mitch.e.l.l was the doctor"s eldest daughter, and had in no sense improved as to her toilet--"a thing which could hardly be expected, since she had thrown away so much money on that wild scheme of living in the woods;" that was what some of the congregation thought about her.
Dr. Dennis saw all these girls, and looked gloomy over them; he was in the mood to need sympathetic hearers, to long to be in accord with his audience, and feel that they could sympathize with him in his reach after a higher type of religion. What could these four girls know about a higher type, when they had no religion at all, and had been spending two lawless weeks in looking at the subject, till their hearts were either attuned to ridicule or disgusted, according to their several temperaments? That was what the faces of our four girls said to him. Yet how they listened to his sermon.
"I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." These were the words on which he spoke; and the burden of his thought was that satisfaction was not to be sought for here; nothing less than the absolute _likeness_ should give absolute satisfaction; and this likeness was to be forever eagerly, earnestly, constantly, sought for, striven after, until some day would come that blessed awakening, and the picture would be found to be complete!
Was it the best sermon that had ever been preached? Was it the _only_ spiritual sermon that the First Church people had ever heard, or was it that four girls had been to Chautauqua, and there learned how to listen?
Their cheeks glowed, and their eyes dilated over the wonderful thoughts that the subject presented, the endless possibility for climbing!
Marion Wilbur had been counted ambitious; she had longed for a chance to reach high; here was her chance; she felt it, and gloried in it; she meant to try. Every nerve quivered with the determination, and the satisfaction of realizing that she belonged to the great royal family.
No more obscurity for her. She was a child of the King, and the kingdom was in view. A crown, aglow with jewels--nothing less must satisfy her now. The sermon over, the hymn sung, and amid the pealing of the organ, as it played the worshipers down the aisles, our four girls met.
They knew each other"s determination. The next thing to do was to go to Sunday-school. But I suppose you have no idea how strangely they felt; how much it seemed to them as if they were children who had come to a party uninvited, and as if they must at this last minute hide their heads and run home. The very effort to go up to the Sunday-school room seemed too much a cross to undertake.
There were so many to stare, and look their amazement; there was no one to go with; n.o.body to think of such a thing as asking them to go. It would have been so much less awkward if they could have followed in the lead of one who had said, "Won"t you come up and see our Sunday-school?"
The superintendent pa.s.sed them as they stood irresolute; he bowed courteously, and no more thought of asking them to join him than though they had been birds of brilliant plumage flying by. Dr. Dennis pa.s.sed them; _he_ said good-morning, not gladly, not even graciously; he dreaded those girls, and their undoubted influence. They had not the least idea how much mischief they had done him in the way of frittering away his influence heretofore. How should they know that he dreaded them? On the other hand how was he to know that they absolutely longed for him to take them by the hand, and say, "Come?" They looked at him curiously as he pa.s.sed, and Eurie said:
"Doesn"t it make your heart beat to think of going to him in his study, and having a private talk?"
"Dear me!" said Flossy, "I never shall think of such a thing. I couldn"t do it any more than I could fly."
"There are harder things than that to do, I suspect; and it will come to a visit to his study if we are to unite with the church; don"t you know that is what he always asks of those?"
And then these girls looked absolutely blank, for to two of them the thought of that duty had never occurred before; they did not understand it well enough to know that it was a privilege.
"Well," said Eurie, rallying first, of course, "are we to stand here gazing around us all day, because n.o.body knows enough to invite us to go up-stairs? It is clear that we are not to be invited. They are all come--all the Sabbath-school people; and, hark! why, they are singing."
"Dear me!" said Flossy; "then it is commenced; I hate to go in when it is commenced. How very unfortunate this is!"
"Serves us right," said Marion. "We ought to be in a condition to invite others, instead of waiting here to be invited. I"ll tell you what, girls, if we ever get to feel that we _do_ belong, let"s const.i.tute ourselves a committee to see after timid strangers, like ourselves, and give them a _chance in_, at least."
"Well," said Ruth, speaking for the first time, "shall we go home and wait till next Sunday, and take a fair start, as Flossy says, it isn"t pleasant to go in after the exercises have fairly opened?" As she said this, for the first time in her life Miss Ruth Erskine began to have a dim idea that possibly she might be a coward; this certainly sounded a little like it.
Each waited to get a bit of advice from the other. Both Marion and Eurie, it must be confessed, bold spirits that they were, so dreaded this ordeal, that each hoped the other would advise retreat as the wisest thing to be done next. It was Flossy who spoke:
"I am going up now; it won"t be any easier next Sunday, and I want to begin."
"There!" said Eurie, "that is just what I needed to shame me into common sense. What a company of idiots we are! Marion, what would you think of a day-scholar who would stand shivering outside your doors for this length of time? Now come on, all of you;" and she led the way up-stairs.
How very awkward it was! It was during the opening prayer that they arrived, and they had to stand by the door and be peeped at by irreverent children; then they had to invite themselves to a vacant seat near the door. The superintendent came that way presently, and said:
"Good-morning, young ladies; so you have come in to visit our school?
Glad to see you; it is a pleasant place, I think you will find."
"That is extremely doubtful," Eurie said, in undertone, as he pa.s.sed on.
How the children did stare!
"They are certainly unused to visitors," Ruth said, growing uncomfortable under such prolonged gazing. "What is the use of all this, girls? We might better be at home."
"If we had grown up here," Eurie said, bravely, "we should probably have our place by this time. It all comes of our graceful lives. But I must say they make it very easy for people to stay away. Why on earth don"t they invite us to go into Bible cla.s.ses? What right have they to take it for granted that we came out of pure curiosity?"
The business of the hour went on, and our girls were still left unmolested. As the newness wore somewhat away, the situation began to grow funny. They could see that the pastor and the superintendent were engaged in anxious conversation, to judge by the gravity of their faces; and as their eyes occasionally roved in that direction, it was natural to suppose they were discussing the unexpected visitors.
Could they have heard the anxious talk it would have been a solemn comment on their reputations.
"That Morris cla.s.s is vacant again to-day," the superintendent was saying; "I don"t know what we are to do with that cla.s.s; no one is willing to undertake it."
The pastor looked toward his own large cla.s.s waiting for him, and said, with a weary sigh:
"I believe I shall have to give up my cla.s.s to some one and take that. I don"t want to; it is a cla.s.s which requires more nervous energy than I have at command at this hour of the day. But what is to be done with them to-day?"
"Would it do to ask one of the young ladies on the visitors" seat?"
And then the eyes of the two men turned toward the girls.
"They are afraid of us," whispered Eurie, her propensity to see the ludicrous side of things in no whit destroyed by her conversion. "Look at their troubled faces; they think that we are harbingers of mischief.
Oh me! What a reputation to have! But I declare it is funny." Whereupon she laughed softly, but unmistakably.
It was at this moment that Dr. Dennis" eyes rested on her.
"Oh, they are only here for material to make sport of," he said, gloomily; "Miss Erskine might keep the boys quiet for awhile if she chose to do so, I suppose."
"Or Miss Wilbur. Some of the boys in that cla.s.s are in school, in her ward; they say she has grand order."
Dr. Dennis" face grew stern.
"No," he said, "don"t ask _her_; at least we will not put them in a way to learn error, if we can teach them nothing good. Miss Wilbur is an infidel. I don"t know what is to be done with that cla.s.s, as you say.
Poor Morris, I am afraid, will never be able to take it again; and he was utterly discouraged with them, anyway. They get no good here that I can see; and they certainly do infinite mischief to the rest of the school."
"But at the same time I suppose we cannot send them away?"