 | CHAPTER XV.
THE WORLD WITH TWO INHABITANTS. A woman in armor |  |
15. CHAPTER XV.
THE WORLD WITH TWO INHABITANTS.
BILLY SINKS went before her up the
church stairs, carrying a lighted taper
in his hands.
She said to herself, “Thus goes my life—
trailing through chill and night, yet still rising
upward, thank God! and following a little light
which may lead to a greater light.”
Billy illuminated the organ loft and she opened
her instrument.
“Billy!”
Before he got into his place she darted a hand
toward him. He took it, holding it between
both his gingerly, as if it were some fine trust
which he might break.
“I want to look at you; I want to feel with
folks! It's lonesome sometimes, isn't it, Billy?”
“Yes'm,” replied Billy, swelling, and knowing
not what to say to comfort her.
“Has anything happened to trouble you while
I have been gone? Can't I help you some way,
Billy?”
This was always her instinct when she found
her own hurts unberable, to creep to some
fellow-soldier, offer her canteen of comfort, and
forget herself in him.
No'm; nothing had gone wrong with Billy,
'ceptin' he couldn't help feelin' so 'bout her and
little George. There wasn't nothin' he wouldn't
do; 'nd him and another feller would foller and
thrash that big feller what run off little George
if she wanted them to!
The conceit provoked a faint laugh from her,
but his genuine love helped her. She tried to
catch some freshness from his sturdy spirit, and
stirred him to tell her amusing things, and finally
turned to the instrument with some heart for it.
Why would her hands only bring out low,
sweet, crying music this night? Though she
struck martial chords and moved never so triumphantly,
the sobbing would break through,
until she gave quite up to it, and wailed through
her organ all that she could not speak.
After a while the voice of the pipe-spirit died
in a cry; it breathed but mighty sighs.
Billy started from his place and peeped around
the corner. The organist was leaning down on
her arms.
“Go home, Billy,” she spoke slowly. “Go
at once. Don't wait for me. I shall play no
more to-night.”
After hesitating till she repeated the command,
distantly away like summer thunder.
She was so tired, so heart-broken, this Helen
Dimmock, leaning against the organ. It looked
impossible to take another step on life's hard
road. Work—even work which many considered
degrading—she never feared. But her
loss and loneliness were insupportable. It
seemed she must die under her load there.
“Helen!”
She started from her bench, her heart beating
in her mouth; she looked all around the great,
dark space, seeing no one. Again, near her
left—
“Helen! Don't let me frighten you, but tell
me I may come there to you and find comfort!”
Stanthorne, with a face as worn as her own,
was looking up to her from the railing outside
the choir. He dropped his valise and pulled
the slouching hat off his sleet-chilled hair. His
eyes were lover's eyes, dazzling her, revealing
many things to her in an instant. While he
called to her using that name of hers, which he
had never used before excepting in his thoughts,
it seemed as if he were some close friend who
had been hers in another life, and who was
come to reclaim her.
“I have been listening to you,” he said,
“while you played, and I know you are troubled.
That is what made me bold enough to come up.
“I love you. Will you let me tell you so?
I gave you my love freely a long while ago.
“But, oh, now I need some love, some comfort
myself! Oh, Helen, if you tell me to go
away I will go, and never trouble you any
more! But if you could care for me—oh, if
you could let me come to you now! My heart
is broken! I have lost the dearest friend I had
in the world—”
“Come!” Helen reached her hands toward
him. He leaped the railing and came and
dropped his head against her knee.
“My poor boy!” she said, touching his
damp hair; “tell me all about it and let me
comfort you.”
So, with her mother-heart she first met her
lover.
As he mutely caressed her hand his first comfort
was in possessing her. It seemed no new
thing. It seemed as if she had been his own
for a long time. That was so much a matter of
course for them to belong to each other.
He told her all about it; made her see how
interwoven his mother's life and his own life
had been. Young men go away from home
and forget their mothers.
But Stanthorne's mother was one not to be
forgotten. She filled his heart and kept the bad
out. She was an ideal woman; such an one as
we meet only once or twice in life, and who
strikes us with astonishment.
Men's mothers die and men regret them; but
their faces are turned from “mother” toward
wife and children. It is natural, we say. But it
is not natural. Who ought ever to be so holy-close
to Man as his Mother, except the nearer
Christ?
Stanthorne's mother had so held her turbulent
boy that her influence would never leave him.
It was like taking the blessed sacrament, to
tell it all out to this precious woman whom he
had found.
Her first office for him was to come in between
him and his sorrow. And whatever he
lacked Helen added unto him.
He knew nothing of what had happened to
her in the interval of his absence. He came off
the night train and tramped past the church because
it brought her near his thoughts; and,
hearing the organ, he stopped in the falling
sleet to listen. Billy Sinks came out and left
the door unlocked, supposing Helen would immediately
follow; and Stanthorne went impulsively
up to her by the way thus left open.
His was a loyal, simple nature. While Helen's
hand lay on his hair, and she realized that he
was her own—this gifted, pure man, whom any
woman would trust on instinct—tears rushed to
her eyes and flowed freely over her cheeks.
She could cry now. The unendurable ache
melted away.
He was so peculiarly precious because he
came in her darkest hour.
Her lover sat beside her and took the tired
head on his shoulder, and she told him all her
bereavements. As often as his impulsive indignation
burst out, or a caressing touch spoke his
sympathy, just so often were her own indignation
and sorrow eased off her. It is so good to
divide our loads with our loves.
Thus in a little time they were grown very
near, and accustomed to each other. They sat
in this lighted corner of the church's mighty
hollow. White statues, holy faces, letters of
texts, half revealed themselves from the darkness
below. They were on God's and love's
consecrated ground. Who knew what changes
were taking place in the heavens over their
heads?
It is strange to think how the One who sets
systems whirling and spreads star-dust for a
pavement for His feet, yet stoops down every
day to make new worlds with a man and a
woman in each! “He loves true lovers.”
| CHAPTER XV.
THE WORLD WITH TWO INHABITANTS. A woman in armor | |