The Lady of the Aroostook Part 11

"Anything to oblige a friend," returned Hicks. "But I don't sing--before Miss Blood."

"Miss Blood," said Staniford, listening in ironic safety, "you overawe us all. I never did sing, but I think I should want to make an effort if you were not by."

"But don't you--don't you play something, anything?" persisted Dunham, in desperate appeal to Hicks.

"Well, yes," the latter admitted, "I play the flute a little."

"Flutes on water!" said Staniford. Hicks looked at him in sulky dislike, but as if resolved not to be put down by him.

"And have you got your flute with you?" demanded Dunham, joyously.

"Yes, I have," replied Hicks.

"Then we are all right. I think I can carry a part, and if you will play to Miss Blood's singing--"

"Try it this evening, if you like," said the other.

"Well, ah--I don't know. Perhaps--we hadn't better begin this evening."

Staniford laughed at Dunham's embarra.s.sment. "You might have a sacred concert, and Mr. Hicks could represent the shawms and cymbals with his flute."

Dunham looked sorry for Staniford's saying this. Captain Jenness stared at him, as if his taking the names of these scriptural instruments in vain were a kind of blasphemy, and Lydia seemed puzzled and a little troubled.

"I didn't think of its being Sunday," said Hicks, with what Staniford felt to be a cunning a.s.sumption of manly frankness, "or any more Sunday than usual; seems as if we had had a month of Sundays already since we sailed. I'm not much on religion myself, but I shouldn't like to interfere with other people's principles."

Staniford was vexed with himself for his scornful pleasantry, and vexed with the others for taking it so seriously and heavily, and putting him so unnecessarily in the wrong. He was angry with Dunham, and he said to Hicks, "Very just sentiments."

"I am glad you like them," replied Hicks, with sullen apprehension of the offensive tone.

Staniford turned to Lydia. "I suppose that in South Bradfield your Sabbath is over at sundown on Sunday evening."

"That used to be the custom," answered the girl. "I've heard my grandfather tell of it."

"Oh, yes," interposed Captain Jenness. "They used to keep Sat.u.r.day night down our way, too. I can remember when I was a boy. It came pretty hard to begin so soon, but it seemed to kind of break it, after all, having a night in."

The captain did not know what Staniford began to laugh at. "Our Puritan ancestors knew just how much human nature could stand, after all. We did not have an uninterrupted Sabbath till the Sabbath had become much milder. Is that it?"

The captain had probably no very clear notion of what this meant, but simply felt it to be a critical edge of some sort. "I don't know as you can have too much religion," he remarked. "I've seen some pretty rough customers in the church, but I always thought, What would they be out of it!"

"Very true!" said Staniford, smiling. He wanted to laugh again, but he liked the captain too well to do that; and then he began to rage in his heart at the general stupidity which had placed him in the att.i.tude of mocking at religion, a thing he would have loathed to do. It seemed to him that Dunham was answerable for his false position. "But we shall not see the right sort of Sabbath till Mr. Dunham gets his Catholic church fully going," he added.

They all started, and looked at Dunham as good Protestants must when some one whom they would never have suspected of Catholicism turns out to be a Catholic. Dunham cast a reproachful glance at his friend, but said simply, "I am a Catholic,--that is true; but I do not admit the pretensions of the Bishop of Rome."

The rest of the company apparently could not follow him in making this distinction; perhaps some of them did not quite know who the Bishop of Rome was. Lydia continued to look at him in fascination; Hicks seemed disposed to whistle, if such a thing were allowable; Mr. Watterson devoutly waited for the captain. "Well," observed the captain at last, with the air of giving the devil his due, "I've seen some very good people among the Catholics."

"That's so, Captain Jenness," said the first officer.

"I don't see," said Lydia, without relaxing her gaze, "why, if you are a Catholic, you read the service of a Protestant church."

"It is not a Protestant church," answered Dunham, gently, "as I have tried to explain to you."

"The Episcopalian?" demanded Captain Jenness.

"The Episcopalian," sweetly reiterated Dunham.

"I should like to know what kind of a church it is, then," said Captain Jenness, triumphantly.

"An Apostolic church."

Captain Jenness rubbed his nose, as if this were a new kind of church to him.

"Founded by Saint Henry VIII. himself," interjected Staniford.

"No, Staniford," said Dunham, with a soft repressiveness. And now a threatening light of zeal began to burn in his kindly eyes. These souls had plainly been given into his hands for ecclesiastical enlightenment.

"If our friends will allow me, I will explain--"

Staniford's shaft had recoiled upon his own head. "O Lord!" he cried, getting up from the table, "I can't stand _that_!" The others regarded him, as he felt, even to that weasel of a Hicks, as a sheep of uncommon blackness. He went on deck, and smoked a cigar without relief. He still heard the girl's voice in singing; and he still felt in his nerves the quality of latent pa.s.sion in it which had thrilled him when she sang.

His thought ran formlessly upon her future, and upon what sort of being was already fated to waken her to those possibilities of intense suffering and joy which he imagined in her. A wound at his heart, received long before, hurt vaguely; and he felt old.

XI.

No one said anything more of the musicales, and the afternoon and evening wore away without general talk. Each seemed willing to keep apart from the rest. Dunham suffered Lydia to come on deck alone after tea, and Staniford found her there, in her usual place, when he went up some time later. He approached her at once, and said, smiling down into her face, to which the moonlight gave a pale mystery, "Miss Blood, did you think I was very wicked to-day at dinner?"

Lydia looked away, and waited a moment before she spoke. "I don't know,"

she said. Then, impulsively, "Did you?" she asked.

"No, honestly, I don't think I was," answered Staniford. "But I seemed to leave that impression on the company. I felt a little nasty, that was all; and I tried to hurt Mr. Dunham's feelings. But I shall make it right with him before I sleep; he knows that. He's used to having me repent at leisure. Do you ever walk Sunday night?"

"Yes, sometimes," said Lydia interrogatively.

"I'm glad of that. Then I shall not offend against your scruples if I ask you to join me in a little ramble, and you will refuse from purely personal considerations. Will you walk with me?"

"Yes." Lydia rose.

"And will you take my arm?" asked Staniford, a little surprised at her readiness.

"Thank you."

She put her hand upon his arm, confidently enough, and they began to walk up and down the stretch of open deck together.

"Well," said Staniford, "did Mr. Dunham convince you all?"

"I think he talks beautifully about it," replied Lydia, with quaint stiffness.