University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
A PRAYER-MEETING.

CHRISTINA was going to a prayer-meeting.
This may sound very much like a Sunday-school
book, — I spare the “cricket's eye” the
trouble of making the observation for me, — but
as long as it is a fact that Christina was going to
a prayer-meeting. I am compelled, for the sake
of history, at any cost, to make the statement. I
should add, perhaps, that it was a Sabbath night,
which may be considered as excusable of the circumstance
that Christina did go to the prayer-meeting.
When I further record that Mrs. Purcell
did not go to the prayer-meeting (being on
duty at the minister's, who had six babies, chicken-pox,
a sick wife, and the prayer-meeting on
his hands), and that Dr. Dyke Burtis did, I have
made three statements of no interest to anybody
unless I except Christina and the doctor, — and
that is no business of ours, because they were

going to a prayer-meeting; but I have, I trust,
proved as clearly and briefly as possible, to the
most heretical mind, that, and why, Eunice, who
was too ill to go to a prayer-meeting on the
evening in question, was alone in the house.

“Not afraid?” said Christina, stooping to
kiss her, as the doctor's ring summoned her
half reluctantly away. “You look so lonely!
What is the book, — Herbert? It must be as
melancholy as — as going nutting, to read Herbert
of a winter's evening, all alone in the
house!”

Eunice smiled, but when Christina had gone,
and her laugh, tinkling as if a Swiss bell-ringer
were touching wedding music on it, had died
away from hearing, her smile faded quite. Perhaps
the reading was as “melancholy” as one
of Herbert's own “sowre-sweete dayes.” She
turned the leaf, half listening to Christina, and
when silence dropped slowly reread the poem.

Eunice dropped from the Bach-like music of
the words into a strain of solemn thinking;
somewhat of her past, more of the coming
years

She was beginning of late to feel that she had
coming years of her own to live for, to be at
peace in, to take real solid human comfort in,
— the common comfort of common people; perhaps
just such content in living for life's own
sake, such consciousness of right to live and
worth in living, as if she were but one of “other
people,” after all. As if indeed the pretty poetry

were but prose: “We always may be what we
might have been.”

Since the death of her child, great quiet, both
from within and from without, had fallen upon
her. In place of the anxious, uneasy moods of
the half-hearted, disgraced young mother, a
solemn thankfulness that the little thing was
beyond their reach, and beyond the reach of the
world which would deal by the child as it had
dealt by her, filled and hushed her. The living
child had dishonored her, — not so much in the
eyes of the world, which was the smaller matter,
as constantly and inevitably in her own. The
little grave upon the purple hill, she felt, could
not disgrace her. Her sense of bitterness and
shame when (poor mother!) she said “my child”
was settling into a kind of pleased expectancy
because that holy thing, a dead baby, was
hers to find, in some certain, happy time, “all
over again,” she said to Christina. In fact, in a
healthy, honest way, with no attempted sentimental
grief and regretting, Eunice was glad
that her little boy had died. She never assumed
that the matter was otherwise with her;
never affected a sorrow which she could not feel,

had never felt. It was well with the child. It
was well with her. The Lord had remembered
them both. Why make a feint of mourning?

This evident state of mind in Eunice caused
some disapprobation in Gower. At least, Gower
would have had her wear crape and cry at the
funeral; though Gower owned that she had been
seen on still evenings climbing the purple hill to
little Kent's grave, “as bold as you please, and
never cared for nobody that saw her go.”

Yet, on the whole, the world — typified in
Gower — was beginning to be not all unkind
to Eunice Trent. Gower was no worse than
other places. “This is not so much a wicked
as a stupid world.” Christianity was not, thirty
years ago at least, “a failure.” And this woman
had lived so patient, brave, and pure a life! For
all her past she had been so sorry! For a right
to her future she had appealed with such persistent
trustfulness in the force of the Lord
Christ's example! Ever since disgrace had
taken her prisoner, she had held up such pleading
hands and such unspotted hands — to be “let
out”! Honest men and women were beginning
honestly to say, This is a good woman, after

all. There may be a place for her — even for
her — among us. It is a very “unusual case.”
She has had “peculiar advantages.” She has a
claim to “uncommon charity.” She has evinced
a “most penitent spirit.” Have you not observed
her great “humility”? Shall we take her in?

“I am much surprised,” wrote Mrs. Zerviah
Myrtle to friends in Gower, “to hear of the position
which little Nixy Trent is acquiring among
you. I was always much interested in the girl,
and I am rejoiced to learn that any one with
superior opportunities to mine has exerted a missionary
work upon the poor young thing. Her
case was so sad and depressing! You may be
sure that your charitable spirit will be wisely
expended and well rewarded.”

Eunice was thinking of this, wondering whether
any other than the “charitable” amenities of
society were likely ever to be offered to her, or
were indeed due to her, — wondering idly, for
she did not much care, — when some slight
noise, — the cracking of plaster, the creaking of
a door, — happening to strike her ear and her
musing, recalled her suddenly to the idea that
the house was rather “lonely — with Herbert —

of a winter's evening,” and that she was ready
for company, and Christina.

It was not, however, at all time for Christina,
and Mrs. Purcell never got home early from the
minister's. (“I wish the minister had more salary
or fewer babies; mother will kill herself playing
his nursery-maid,” Christina used to say.) So
Eunice, with the common longing of lonely people
for light, — how many life-long sorrows have
been cured in ten minutes by kerosene! — brightened
Mrs. Purcell's astral-lamp; by which process
she covered her finger with lard-oil, and so forgot
whether she was lonely or not, and rose to rake
the coals.

As she did this, an unusual noise fell upon her
ear.

She laid down her poker, thinking that perhaps
the servants, early home, were locked out
at the back door, and stood, a lovely, listening
figure, full in the centre of the rich uncurtained
room; Margaret, for the sake of people “out
in the cold,” seldom draws her shades in the
evening.

The sound was immediately repeated; it was
just without the front window, and resembled the

noise which a step upon the crusted snow would
make, though it was an irregular, uncertain noise,
like that of a step in a place where a step had no
business to be.

“Christina!”

Eunice called distinctly, but received no answer.
Thinking still that Christina, perhaps in a
freakish mood, was trying to look in or climb in
through the low window, or that Bridget was
drunk, and had mistaken the window for the
back door, she crossed the room with composure
to open it.

She lacked yet several feet of the window
when she stopped.

Pressed close against the glass, and looking in,
and looking at her, was the face of a man.