Infelice Part 42

"The feeling G.o.d put into my soul when He gave it to me, to teach me right from wrong."

"Is it? And if you were a Calmuck or a Mongol, it would teach you to reverence s.h.i.+gemooni as the highest G.o.d; and bid you fall down and wors.h.i.+p Dalai-lama, praying him to give you a pill of consecrated dough."

"You mean that conscience is merely education? Even if it should be so--which is not true, I think--the Bible says 'the heathen are a law unto themselves,' and G.o.d knows they wors.h.i.+p the best they can find until revelation shows them their error. But I do not live in La.s.sa, and my going to church here, is not akin to Lamaism. Nothing will happen to me, and I a.s.sure you, sir, I will come home as soon as the service is over."

"Is your eternal salvation dependent on church going?"

"I don't know, I rather think not; because if it were impossible for me to attend service the Lord would know it, and He only requires what He makes possible. But at least you must admit it cannot harm me; and I enjoy coming to this church more than any I have seen since I left our own dear old one at V----."

"It is a small, very plain affair, in no respect comparable to St.

Thomas's Church, where Mrs. Palma takes you every Sunday morning.

Where you not there to-day?"

"Yes, sir; but----"

"But--what? Speak out."

"Perhaps I ought not to say so,--and it may be partly my fault, but indeed there seems to me more real religion in this plain little chapel, at least it does me more good to come here."

"For instance, it incites and helps you defy your guardian on the street!"

Until now she had resolutely kept her face set churchward, but as he uttered the last words in a severer tone than he often used in conversation with her, she turned quite around and retraced her steps.

Walking beside her, he could only see the long soft lashes of her downcast eyes, and the firm compression of her mouth.

"Little girl, are you very angry?"

She looked up quickly into his brilliant smiling eyes, and her cheek dimpled.

"Mr. Palma, I wanted so very much to go, and I do feel disappointed; but not angry."

"Then why do you not ask me to go with you?"

"You go there? Is it possible that you would ever do such a thing?

Really would you go, sir?"

"Try me."

"Please Mr. Palma, go with me."

He raised his hat, bowed, and said:

"I will."

"Oh, thank you!"

They turned and walked back in silence until they reached the door, and he asked:

"Are the pews free?"

"Yes, sir; but Mrs. Mason and I generally sit yonder by that column."

"Very well, you must pilot me."

She turned into the side aisle next the windows, and they seated themselves in a pew just beyond the projection of the choir gallery.

The edifice was small, but the altar and pulpit were handsome, and though the windows were unstained, the light was mellowed by buff inside blinds. The seats were by no means filled, and the congregation was composed of people whose appearance denoted that many belonged to the labouring cla.s.s, and none to the Brahmin caste of millionnaires, though all were neatly and genteely apparelled.

As the silver-haired pastor entered the pulpit the organ began to throb in a low prelude, and four gentlemen bore shallow waiters through the a.s.semblage, to receive the contribution for the "Dest.i.tute." Mr. Palma saw his companion take something from her glove, and when the waiter reached them and she put in her small alms, which he judged amounted to twenty-five cents, he slipped his fingers in his vest pocket and dropped a bill on the plate.

"Is all that huge sum going to India to the missionaries?" he gravely whispered.

"It is to feed the poor of this church."

As the organ swelled fuller and louder, Mr. Palma saw Regina start, and listen intently; then the choir begin to sing, and she turned very pale and shut her eyes. He could discover nothing remarkable in the music,--"Oh that I had wings!" but as it progressed the girl's emotion increased, became almost uncontrollable, and through the closed lids the tears forced themselves rapidly, while she trembled visibly, and seemed trying to swallow her sobs.

He moved closer to her, and the blue eyes opened and looked at him with such pleading deprecating misery in their beautiful depths, that he was touched, and involuntarily laid his ungloved hand on her little bare fingers. Instantly they closed around it, twining like soft tendrils about his, and unconsciously his clasp tightened.

All through the singing her tears fell unchecked, sliding over her cheeks and upon her white dress, and when the congregation knelt in prayer, Mr. Palma only leaned his head on the back of the pew in front, and watched the figure bowed on her knees, close beside him, crying silently, with her face in her hands.

When the prayer ended and the minister announced the hymn, she seemed to have recovered her composure, and finding the page, offered her pretty gilt hymn-book to her guardian. He accepted it mechanically, and during the reading of the Scriptures that soon followed he slowly turned over the leaves until he reached the t.i.tle-page. On the fly-leaf that fluttered over was written: "Regina Orme. With the love and prayers of Dougla.s.s Lindsay."

Closing the book, he laid it in his lap, leaned back and folded his arms over his chest.

The preacher read the sixty-third Psalm, and from it selected his text: "My soul followeth hard after Thee."

Although certainly not a modern Chrysostom, he was an earnest, faithful, and enlightened man, full of persuasive fervour; and to the brief but interesting discourse he delivered--a discourse occasionally sprinkled with felicitous metaphors and rounded with several eloquent pa.s.sages--Mr. Palma appeared to listen quite attentively. Once a half smile moved his mouth, as he wondered what his a.s.sociates at the "Century" would think, if they could look in upon him there; otherwise his deportment was most gravely decorous.

As he heard the monotonous rise and fall of the minister's tone, the words soon ceased to bear any meaning to ears that gradually caught other cadences long hushed; the voice of memory calling him from afar off, back to the dewy days of his early boyhood, when walking by his mother's side he had gone to church, and held her book as he now held Regina's. Since then, how many changes time had wrought! How holy seemed that distant, dim, church-going season!

At long intervals, and upon especially august occasions he had now and then attended service in the elegant church where his pew-rent was regularly paid; but not until to-day had he been attacked by the swarming reminiscences of his childhood, all eagerly babbling of the long-forgotten things once learned--

"At that best academe, a mother's knee."

From the benignant countenance of the earnest preacher his keen cold eyes began to wander, and after awhile rested upon the pale tender face at his side.

Except that the lashes were heavy with moisture that no longer overflowed in drops, there was no trace of the shower that had fallen; for hers was one of those rare countenances, no more disfigured by weeping, than the pictured _Mater Dolorosa_ by the tear on her cheek.

To-day in the subdued sadness that filled her heart, while she pondered the depressing news from India, her face seemed etherealized, singularly sublimated; and as he watched the expression of child-like innocence, the delicate tracery of nose and brows, the transparent purity of the complexion, and the unfathomable purplish blue of the eyes uplifted to the pulpit, a strange thrill never experienced before stirred his cold stony heart, and quickened the beat of his quiet, slow steady pulse.

He had smiled and bowed before lovely women of various and bewitching types of beauty, had his abstract speculative ideal of feminine perfection, and had been feted, flattered, coaxed, baited, and welcomed to many shrines, whereon grace, wit, and wealth had lavished their choicest charms; but the carefully watched and well-regulated valvular machine he was pleased to designate his heart, had never as yet experienced a warmer sensation than that of mere critical admiration for cla.s.sic contours, symmetrical figures, or voluptuous Paul Veronese colouring.

Once only, early in his professional career, he had coolly, dispa.s.sionately, sordidly, and with a hand as firm as Astraea's own, held the matrimonial scales, and weighed the influence and preferment that he could command by a politic and brilliant marriage, against the advantages of freedom, and the glory of una.s.sisted success and advancement. For the lady herself--a bright, mirthful, pretty brunette, who in contrast with his frigid nature seemed a gaudy tropical bird fluttering around a stolid arctic auk--he had not even a shadow of affection; and looked quite beyond the graceful lay figure draped with his name to the lofty judicial eminence where her distinguished father held sway, and could rapidly elevate him.

No softer emotion than ambition had suggested the thought, and after a patient balancing of the opposing weights of selfishness, he had utterly thrown aside the thought of entangling himself in any Hymeneal snares.

Probably few men have attained his age without having breathed vows of love into some rosy ear; but his colossal professional pride and vanity had absolutely absorbed him--left him neither room nor time for other and softer sentiments.

The numerous attempts to entrap his dim chilly affections had somewhat lowered his estimate of female delicacy; and possessing the flattering a.s.surance that no fair hand was held too high for his grasp, should he choose to claim it, he had grown rather arrogant. Of coquetry he was entirely innocent; it seemed too contemptible even for mere sport, and he scorned the thought of feeding his vanity by feminine sacrifices.

Too sternly proud to owe success to any but his own will and resolution, he had never proposed or even desired to marry any woman; and was generally regarded as a hopelessly icy bachelor, whom all welcomed with smiles, but despaired of captivating.