University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
A DRINKING SONG AT A PRAYER-MEETING.

HAVING failed in inducing Annie to stay at
home, Walter purposed that the prayer-meeting
should not be one of quiet devotion. Mr. Walton
made him, as an invalid, take the back seat with
Annie while he sat with the driver, and Walter, after
faint show of resistance, gladly complied.

“It's chilly. Won't you give me half of your
shawl?” he said to her.

“You may have it all,” said Annie, about to take
it off.

“No, I'll freeze first. Do the brethren and sisters
sit together?”

“No,” she replied, laughing, “we have got in the
queer way of dividing the room between us, and the
few men who attend sit on one side and we on the
other.”

“Oh, it's almost a female prayer-meeting then.
Do the sisters pray?”

“Mr. Gregory, you are not a stranger here that
you need pretend to such ignorance. I think the
meeting is conducted very much as when you were
a boy.”

“With this most interesting difference, that you

will be there and will sing, I hope. Miss Walton
where did you learn to sing?”

“Mainly at home, sir.”

“I should think so. Your voice is as unlike that
of a public singer as you are unlike the singer herself.”

“It must seem very tame to you.”

“It seems very different. We have an artificial
flower department in our store. There is no lack of
color and form there I assure you, but after all I
would prefer your rose garden in June.”

“But you would probably prefer your artificial
flower department the rest of the year,” said Annie,
laughing.

“Why so?”

“Our roses are annuals and are only prosaic briars
after their bloom.”

“Imagine them hybrid perpetuals and monthlies
and you have my meaning. But your resemblance
to a rose extends even to its thorns. Your words
are a little sharp sometimes.”

“In the thorns the resemblance begins and ends,
Mr. Gregory. I assure you I am a veritable Scotch
Briar. But here we are at our destination. I wonder
if you will see many old, remembered faces?”

“I shall be content in seeing yours,” he replied
in a low tone, pressing her hand as he assisted her
to alight.

If he could have seen the expression of her face
in the darkness it would have satisfied him that she
did not receive that style of compliment like many

of the belles of his acquaintance who will take the
small change of flattery with the smiling complacency
of a public door-keeper.

They were late. The good old pastor was absent,
and one of the brethren was reading a chapter in the
Bible. Walter took a seat where he could see Annie
plainly, and she sat with her side face toward him.

He watched her keenly, in order to see if she
showed any consciousness of his presence. The
only evidence in his favor was a slight flush and a
firmness about the lips, as if her will was asserting
itself. But soon her face had the peaceful and
serious expression becoming the place and hour, and
he saw that she had no thoughts for him whatever.
He was determined to distract her attention, and by
restlessness, by looking fixedly at her, sought her
eye, but only secured the notice of some young girls
who thought him “badly smitten with Miss Walton.”

The long chapter having been read a hymn was
given out. The gentleman who usually led the
music was also absent, and there was an ominous
pause, in which the good brother's eye wandered
appealingly around the room and at last rested
hopefully on Annie. She did not fail him, but, with
heightened color and voice that trembled slightly at
first, “started the tune.” It was a sweet, familiar
air, and she soon had the support of other voices.
One after another they joined her in widely varying
degrees of melody, even as the example of a noble
life will gradually secure a number of more or less
perfect imitators.

Walter had seen the appeal to her with an
amused, half-comical look, but her sincere and ready
performance of the duty that had unexpectedly revealed
itself rapidly changed the expression of his
face to one of respect and admiration. Distinct, and
yet blending with the others, her voice seemed both
to key up and hide the little roughnesses and discords
of some who perhaps had more melody in their
hearts than tones.

Again a divine impulse, like a flower-laden breeze
sweeping into a dark and grated vault at Greenwood,
stirred Gregory's evil nature.

Let her teach you the harmony of noble, unselfish
living. Follow her in thought, feeling, and action,
as those stammering, untuned tongues do in
melody, and the blight of evil will pass from your
life. Seek not to muddy and poison this clear little
rill that is watering a bit of God's world. Grant
that her goodness is not real, established, and thoroughly
tested—that it is only a pretty surface picture.
Seek not to blur that picture.

But the evil heart is like Sodom. Good angel-thoughts
may come to it, but they are treated with
violence and driven out. His habit of cynical
doubt soon returned, and his purpose to show Miss
Walton that she was a weak, vain woman after all,
became stronger than ever.

It had seemingly come to this, that his salvation
depended on, not what Miss Walton could say or do
directly in his behalf, but upon her maintenance of
a character that compels even a sceptical world to

acknowledge as inspired by Heaven, and this, too,
against a tempter of unusual skill and tact. She
might sing with resistless pathos, and argue and
plead with Paul's logic and eloquence. His nature
might be stirred for a moment as a stagnant pool is
agitated by the winds of heaven, and like the pool,
he would soon settle back into his old apathy. But
if she could be made to show weakness, to stumble
and fall, it would confirm him in his belief that goodness,
if it really existed, was accidental: that those
who lived lives apparently free from stain deserved
no credit, because untempted; and that those who
fell should be pitied rather than blamed, since they
were unfortunate rather than guilty. Anything that
would quiet and satisfy his conscience in its stern
arraignment of his evil life would be welcome. The
more he saw of Miss Walton the more he felt that
she would be a fair subject upon whom to test his
favorite theory. Therefore, by the time that one of
the brethern present had finished his homely exhortation
he was wholly bent upon carrying out his
plan.

But Miss Walton sat near as innocently oblivious
of this plot against her as Eve of the serpent's guile
before the tempter and temptation came into fatal
conjunction.

What thoughts for and against each other may
dwell utterly hidden and unknown in the hearts of
those so near that their hands may touch! Conspiracies
to compass the death that is remediless may
lurk just back of eyes that smile upon us. Of course

Walter desired no such fatal result to follow his little
experiment. Few who for their own pleasure, profit
or caprice tempt others wish the evil to work on to
the bitter end. They merely want a sufficient letting
down of principle and virtue for the accomplishment
of their purpose, and then would prefer that
the downward tendency should cease or be reversed.
The merchant who requires dishonorable practices
of his clerk wishes him to stop at a point which, in
the world's estimation, is safe. And those who, like
Gregory, would take the bloom from woman's purity
and holiness in thought and action, that they may
enjoy a questionable flirtation, would be horrified to
see that woman drop into the foul gulf of vice.
With the blind egotism of selfishness, they merely
wish to gratify their present inclinations, ignoring
the consequences. They are like children who think
it would be sport to see a little cataract falling over
a Holland dike. Therefore when the tide is in they
open a small channel, but are soon aghast to find
that the deep sea is overwhelming the land.

Gregory, as with his kind, thought only of his
own desires. When he had accomplished these
Miss Walton must take care of herself. When from
seeming a sweet, pure woman he had, by a little
temptation, found her capable of becoming a vain
flirt, he would go back to business and dismiss her
from his thoughts with the grim chuckle,

“She is like the rest of us.”

And thus Annie was destined to meet her Mother
Eve's experience; and with the energy and promptness

of evil Walter was keenly on the alert for anything
to further his purpose.

It would seem that the Satanic ally in such
schemes does not permit opportunity to be wanting
long. The leader of the meeting again selected a
hymn, but of a peculiar metre. He only read two
lines, and then looked expectantly toward Annie.
For the life of her she could not at the moment
think of a tune that would answer; and while with
knit brows she was bending over her book, to her
unbounded surprise she heard the hymn started by
a clear, mellow tenor voice, and looking up saw
Gregory singing as gravely as a deacon. She was
sufficiently a musician to know that the air did not
belong to sacred music, though she had never heard
it before.

In his watchfulness he had noted her hesitation,
and glancing at the metre saw instantly that the
measure of a drinking song he knew well would fit
the words. This fell out better than he had hoped
and with the thought, “I will jostle her out of her
dignity now,” commenced singing without any embarrassment,
though every eye was upon him. He
had been out in the world too long for that.

As Annie turned with a shocked and half-frightened
expression toward him his eyes met hers with
a sudden gleam of drollery which was irresistible, and
he had the satisfaction of seeing her drop her head
to conceal a smile. But he noticed, a moment later,
that her face became grave with disapprobation.

Having sung a stanza he looked around with an

injured air, as if reproaching the others for not joining
in with him.

“The tune is not exactly familiar to us,” said the
good man leading the meeting, “but if the brother
will continue singing we will soon catch the air; or
perhaps the brother or some one else (with a glance
at Annie) will start one better known.”

Walter deliberately turned over the leaves, and
to the tune of Old Hundred started a hymn commencing,

Annie had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and
the transition from what he had been singing to the
funereal and most inappropriate words was almost
too much for her. To her impotent anger and self-disgust
she felt a hysterical desire to laugh, and
only controlled herself by keeping her head down
and lips firmly pressed together during the remainder
of the brief service.

Even others who did not know Walter could not
prevent a broad smile at the incongruous hymn he
had chosen, but they unitedly wailed it through, for
he persisted in singing it all in the most dirge-like
manner. They gave him credit for doing the best
he could, and supposed his unhappy choice resulted
from haste and confusion. In the spontaneity of
social meetings people become accustomed to much
that is not harmonious.

Mr. Walton was puzzled. His guest was certainly
appearing in an unexpected role and he suspected
that all was not right.

After the meeting the brethren gathered round
and thanked him for his assistance, and he shook
hands with them and the elderly ladies present
with the manner of one who might have been a
“pillar in the temple.” Many of them remembered
his father and mother and supposed their mantle
had fallen on him.

An ancient “mother in Israel” thanked him that
he had “started a tune that they all could sing
instead of the new-fangled ones the young people
are always getting up nowadays. But,” said she,
“I wish you could larn us that pretty one you first
sang, for it took my fancy amazingly. I think I
must have heard it before somewhere.”

Walter gave Annie another of his peculiar looks,
that sent her out hastily into the darkness, and a
moment later joined her at the carriage steps.