Her smile smoothed out. Her face paled; her eyes expanded with wonder till they lost their insane glitter, and grew sad and soft and dark.
"What is it, Nell?" the others asked.
She did not hear them. She seemed to listen. Her eyes seemed to see mountains--or clouds. A land like her childhood"s home with the sunset light over it. Her mug fell with a crash to the table. She rose. Her hand silenced them, with beautiful finger raised:
"Listen! Don"t you hear him? His eyes are calling me. It is Christ."
The others looked, but they saw only a tall figure moving away. He wore a long black cloak like a priest.
"Some foreign duffer lookin" in. Let "im look," said one of the other girls.
"One o" them Egyptian jugglers," said another.
"What"s the matter of ye, Nell? You look as if you"d seen a ghost of y"r grandmother. Set down an" drink y"r beer."
The girl brushed her hand over her eyes. "I"m going home," she said in a low voice from which all individuality had pa.s.sed. Her face seemed anxious, her manner hurried.
"What"s the matter, Nell? My G.o.d! Look at her eyes!--I"m going with her."
The girl put him aside with a gesture. Her look awed him.
One of the others began to laugh.
"Stop! You fool," one of the girls cried. They sat in silence as the younger girl went out, putting aside every hand stretched out to touch her. She walked like one in stupor--her face ghastly. The arch of her beautiful eyebrows was like that of Ophelia in her bitterest moment.
The others watched her go in silence.
One of them drew a sigh and said: "I"m going home, too; I don"t feel well."
"I"ll go with ye," one of the men said.
"Stay where you are!" said the girl sharply.
Once on the street, the younger girl hurried on the way the stranger had gone. His face seemed before her.
She could see it; she should always see it. It was the face of a young man. A firm chin, a strong mouth with a feminine curve in it, a face with a clear pallor that seemed foreign somehow. But the eyes--oh, the eyes!
They were deep and brown, and filled with an infinite sadness--for her.
She felt it, and the knot of pain in the forehead, that was also for her. Something sweet and terrible went out from his presence. A knowledge of infinite s.p.a.ce and infinite time and infinite compa.s.sion.
No man had ever looked at her like that. There was something divine in the penetrating power of his eyes.
Some way she knew he was not a priest, though his cloak and turban cap looked like it. He seemed like a scholar from some strange land--a man above pa.s.sion, a man who knew G.o.d.
His eyes accused her and pitied her, while they called her.
No smile, no shrinking of lips into a sneer--nothing but pity and wonder, and something else----
And a voice seemed to say: "You are too good to be there. Follow me."
As she thought of him he seemed to stand on an immeasurable height looking down at her.
She had laughed at him--O G.o.d!--she flushed hot with shame from head to foot--but his eyes had not changed. His lips had kept their pitying droop, and his somber eyes had burned deep into the sacred places of her thought, where something sweet and girlish lay, unwasted and untrampled.
"He called me. He called me."
Under the trees where the moonlight threw tracing of shadows she came upon him standing, waiting for her. She held out her hand to him like a babe. He was taller than she thought.
He took her hands silently and she grew calm at once. All shame left her. She forgot her city life; she remembered only the sweet, merry life of the village where she was born. The sound of sleigh bells and song, and the lisp of wind in the gra.s.s, and songs of birds in the maples came to her.
His voice began softly:
"You are too good and sweet to be so devoured of beasts. In your little Northern home they are waiting for you. To-morrow you will go back to them."
He placed his hand, which was soft and warm and broad, over her eyes.
His voice was like velvet, soft yet elastic.
"When you wake you will hate what you have been. No power can keep you here. You will go back to the simple life from which you should never have departed. You will love simple things and the pleasures of your native place."
Her face was turned upward, but her eyelids had fallen.
"When you wake you will not remember your life here. You will be a girl again, unstained and ready to begin life without remorse and without accusing memory. When I leave you at your door to-night, you will belong to the kingdom of good and not to the kingdom of evil."
He dropped her hands and pointed across the park.
"Now go to that gray house. Ring the bell, and you will be housed for the night. _Remember you are mine._ When the bell rings you will "wake.""
She moved away without looking back--moved mechanically like one still in sleep.
The man watched her until the door opened and admitted her; then he pa.s.sed on into the shadow of the narrow street.
And this the listener gravely asked:
"One was chosen, the other left. Were the others less in need of grace?"
BEFORE THE LOW GREEN DOOR.
Matilda Bent was dying; there was no doubt of that now, if there had been before. The gruff old physician--one of the many overworked and underpaid country doctors--shook his head and pushed by Joe Bent, her husband, as he pa.s.sed through the room which served as dining room, sitting room, and parlor. The poor fellow slouched back to his chair by the stove as if dazed, and before he could speak again the doctor was gone.
Mrs. Ridings was just coming up the walk as the doctor stepped out of the door.