CHAPTER IV. FAIRPOINT.
It was not so very dark after all, nor so disagreeable as she had imagined. She sat curled up in a heap on the deck of the Col. Phillips, looking with interested eyes on the groups of people, who, despite the rain and darkness, were evidently on their way to Chautauqua. Marion had gone to the other side of the boat and was looking over into the water, rested and interested in spite of herself by the novelty of the scene around her. The fellow-passengers seemed not to be novices like themselves, for as their talk floated to the girls it had sentences like these:
"Last year we stopped in the village, but this time we are going to be right on the ground." "Last year it rained, too; but rain makes no difference at Chautauqua." "They are all last year's people," said Marion, coming over to Flossy's side. "That speaks well for the interest, or the fun, doesn't it? Now what do you suppose takes all these people to this place?" "I don't know," Flossy said thoughtfully, "I never thought much about it. Perhaps some of them came just as I did, because the girls were coming and asked me to. I'm sure I haven't the least idea what else I came for." Marion looked down on the little creature done up in water-proof, with a half-pitying laugh.
"You are a good little mouse," she said patronizingly. "I never remember doing anything without a motive somewhere. It must be refreshing to forget that important individual now and then." "Oh, I don't," Flossy said, simply. "Of course I came for the good time I would have. But then, you know, I would never have thought of coming if the rest of you hadn't." Another laugh from Marion.
"You let others do your thinking for you," she said, with just a touch of contempt, covered by the gayety of the tone. "Well, it is much the easier way. If I could find anyone to undertake the task, I should like to try it for myself." Flossy's answer was a little scream of delight, for they were coming upon fairy-land; the lights of Fairpoint were gleaming in the soft distance, and very fairy-like they looked shining among the trees. The sound of music on the steamer mingled charmingly with the peal of the bells from the shore. Marion looked on the scene with quiet interest. Flossy's face took a pink glow; she liked pretty things. As for those who had been at Chautauqua the year before, they gathered at the vessel's side as those gather who, after a long and tiresome journey, realize that they are nearing home. They were eager and excited.
"The dock is better," said one. "Yes, and the passage way is larger," chimed in his nearest neighbor. "Oh, everything is on an improved scale this year," said still a third, speaking confidently. "The meeting can't be any better," spoke a quiet-faced woman, with a decided voice, "that is simply impossible." Marion laughed softly.
"Hear the lunatics!" she said, bending to give Flossy the benefit of her words. "They are just infatuated; they think this is the original Garden of Eden, with that wretched Eve left out. If she were here I would choke her with a relish." This last in a muttered undertone, too low for even Flossy, and with a darkening face.
Meantime the boat rounded the point, the plank was laid, and the feet of the eager passengers touched the shores of Chautauqua. Some detention about tickets, arising from a misunderstanding of terms, made our girls lose sight and sound of the rest of the boat-load, and when they passed within the railing they found themselves suddenly and strangely alone. A few lights glimmered in the trees, enough to point the way, and from the cottages near at hand streams of light shot out into the darkness; but no sound of footsteps, no sight of human being appeared
"Over the river, on the hill, Another village lieth still," quoted Marion, gravely. Then:
"I say, Flossy, what does it all mean? Are we among a party of witches, do you suppose? Where could those congenial spirits so suddenly have conveyed themselves away, I wonder? The road isn't broad, but it most decidedly isn't straight. Only behold that long, long, long array of damp and empty seats! Where are the faithful now, do you suppose?" "There isn't any meeting here to-night, and we might have known there wouldn't be," Flossy said, peevishly, beginning to grow not only disenchanted but half frightened. "I was never in such a queer place in my life! Those white seats all look like ghosts. What could have possessed you to come to-night? Of course they wouldn't have meeting in the rain! Marion, do let us go back; I am frightened out of my wits!" "You blessed little simpleton!" said Marion, gaily. "What on earth is there to be frightened over? Not pine seats and lamplight, surely, and there is nothing more formidable than that so far." "I wish with all my heart that I were safely back in the hotel, where I would have been if you had not coaxed me away," sighed, or rather whined, poor Flossy, shivering with chilliness or nervousness, and added: "Come, Marion, do let us go back with that boat. It can't have started yet." Marion grasped her hand firmly, and spoke like a commander:
"Flossy Shipley, don't you go to getting nervous and acting like a simpleton, for I won't have it. As for that boat, it is half way to Mayville by this time, and I am glad of it. Do you suppose I am going to make an ignominious retreat now, when we have got so far advanced? Not a bit of it. If there is no meeting, we will go where there ought to be one, since it was advertised, and not a word said about rain. It isn't likely they stay out-doors when it actually pours. Very likely they go in somewhere and have a prayer-meeting. So now compose your nerves and walk fast, for if the spot is within walking distance I am going to find it. I tell you I am to get ten dollars at least for writing up this meeting, and I am going to write it if there is one to write about. If there isn't I shall have to make up one. I dare say I could make it interesting. I'll put you in if I do, and you shall be Mrs. Fearful—in Pilgrim's Progress, you know—if you don't stop shivering and walk faster." During this time they had really been making as rapid progress as the up-hill way and their doubt of the road would allow. Flossy made no reply to this harangue, for the reason that a sudden turn in the path brought them into bright light and the sound of a ringing voice.
"There!" whispered Marion as the mammoth tent came in view. "What did I tell you? What do you think of that for a prayer-meeting?" And then she, too, relapsed into silence, for the ringing tones of the speaker's voice were distinct and clear. They made their way rapidly and silently under the tent, down the aisle—half way down—then a gentleman beckoned them, and by dint of some pushing and moving secured them seats. Then both girls looked about them in astonishment. Who would have supposed that it rained! Why, there were rows and rows and rows of heads, men and women, and even children. A tent larger than they had imagined could be built and packed with people.
Marion's tongue was uncontrollable. She was barely seated before she began her whispered comments:
"That man who is speaking is Dr. Vincent. Hasn't he a ringing voice? It reminds me of a trumpet. He likes to use it, I know he does; he has learned to manage it so nicely, and with an eye to the effect. You will hear his voice often enough, and you just watch and see if you don't learn to know the first echo of it from any other." "Perhaps he won't be here all the time to use his voice," whispered back Flossy, without much idea what she was saying. The novelty of the scene had stolen her senses.
Marion laughed softly.
"You blessed little idiot!" she said, "don't you know that he manufactured Chautauqua, root and branch? Or if he didn't quite manufacture the trees he looked after their growth, I dare say. Why, this meeting is his darling, his idol, his best beloved. 'Hear him speak?' I guess you will. I should like to see a meeting of this kind that didn't hear from him. It will have to be when he is out of the body." "How do you know about him?" whispered Flossy, struck with sudden curiosity.
"I've written him up," Marion said, briefly. "I've had to do it several times. Oh, I'm a veteran at Sunday-school meetings. But he is the hardest man to write about that there is among them, because you can never tell what he may happen to say or do next. It will never do to jump at his conclusions, and slip in a neat little sentence of your own as coming from him if you don't happen to have taken very profuse notes, because as sure as you do he will spring up in some tiresome meeting in less than a week and unsay every single word that you said. He said—" At this point a poor martyr, who had the misery to sit directly in front of these two whisperers, turned and gave them such a look as only a man can under like circumstances, and awed them into five minutes of quiet. It lasted until Dr. Eggleston was announced. Then Marion's tongue broke loose again: "He is the 'Hoosier Schoolmaster.' Don't you know we read his book aloud at the seminary? Looks as though he might have written it, doesn't he? Let's listen to what he says. He always says a word or two that a body can report; very few of them do." This is a fair specimen of the way in which Miss Wilbur buzzed through that meeting—that wonderful meeting, that Flossy Shipley will remember all her life. She made no answer to Marion's comments after a little, and the pink flush glowed deeper on her face. She was wonderfully interested—indeed she was more than interested. There was a strange feeling of pain at her heart, a sort of sick, longing feeling that she had never felt before, to understand what all these people meant, to feel as they seemed to feel.
The Christian world is more to blame for the unspoken infidelity that thrives in its circles than is generally supposed. Flossy Shipley had been in many religious meetings, but she had really never in her life before been among a large gathering of cultured people, who were eager and excited and happy, and the cause for that eagerness and that happiness been found in the religion of Jesus Christ. I do not say that there had never been such meetings before, nor that there have not been many of them. I simply say that it was a new revelation to Flossy, and she had been to the church prayer-meeting at home several times. Whether that church may have been peculiar or not I do not say, but Flossy had certainly failed to get the idea that prayer-meetings were blessed places; that the people who went there from week to week found their joy and their rest and their comfort there. She began to have an unutterable sense of want and longing creeping over her; she stole shy glances at Marion to see if she felt this, but Marion was absorbed just then in catching the speaker's last sentence and writing it down. Her face expressed nothing but business earnestness. Speech-making concluded, there came the "covenant service." "I wonder what that is supposed to be?" whispered Marion. "It sounds like something dreadfully solemn. I hope they are not going to have any scenes. Revivals are not fashionable except in the winter." "Marion, don't !" Flossy said, in an earnest undertone. The gay, and what for the first time struck her as the sacrilegious words, chilled her. And for almost the first time in her life she uttered an unhesitating remonstrance. Something in the tone surprised Marion, and she looked curiously down at her little companion, but said not another word.
The covenant service was the simplest of all services; in fact, only the singing of a familiar hymn and the offering of a prayer. But the hymn was read first, in such solemn, tender, pleading tones as it seemed to Flossy she had never heard before; and the singing rolled around that great tent like the voices of the ten thousand who sing before the throne—at least to Flossy's heart it seemed like that. The prayer that followed was the simplest of all prayers as to words, and the briefest public prayer she ever remembered to have heard, and it made her feel as nothing in life had ever done before. She did not understand the cause for her emotion; she was not acquainted with the Spirit of God; she did not know that he was speaking to her softened heart, and calling her gently to himself, so she felt ashamed of the emotion that she could not help. She wiped the tears away secretly, and was glad that the night was dark and the need for haste great, for the steamer's warning whistle could already be beard. Marion talked on as they went down the hill, not alone now but accompanied by hundreds, talked precisely as she had before the singing of those words and the prayer. "How could she?" Flossy wondered. "How could anything look the same to her?" The Spirit had found no softened heart in which to leave a message, and so had passed by. This, if Flossy had known it, was the reason that Marion was gay and indifferent. If either of them had fully realized the reason for the different effect of the meeting upon them, how startled they would have been! It is not strange after all that a service is not the same to one soul that it is to another, when we remember that God speaks to one and passes another.
The night was still heavy with clouds, not a star to lighten the gloom; a fine mist was falling. It was Marion who shivered this time, and said:
"It is a horrible night, that is a fact; but I am not sorry we went. That meeting will write up splendidly, though it was too long; I will say that in print about it. You must find some fault, you know, when you are writing for the public; it is the fashion." "Was it long?" said Flossy, in an absent tone. She had not thought of it in that way. Then she went to the side of the boat again and sat down in a tumult. What was the matter with her? Where had her complacent, pretty little content gone? Would she always feel so sad and anxious and unhappy, have such a longing as she did now? If she had been wiser she could have told herself that the trouble of heart was caused by an unhealthy excitement upon this question, and that this was the great fault with religious meetings; but she was not wise, she did not think of such a reason. If it had been suggested to her it is doubtful if, in her ignorance, she would not have said: "Why, she had been more excited at an evening party a hundred times than she had thought of being then!" She actually did not know that eagerness and zeal are proper enough at parties, but utterly out of place in religion. Just in front of her sat a young man who hummed in undertone the closing words of the covenant song. It brought the tears again to Flossy's eyes. He turned suddenly toward her.
"It was a pleasant service," he said. "Don't you think so?" It was rather startling to be addressed by a strange young gentleman, or would have been it his voice had not been so quiet and dignified, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to compare notes with one who had just come out from the great meeting.
"I don't know whether it was or not," she said, hurriedly. She could not seem to decide whether she enjoyed it or hated it.
"It was blessed to me," the young man said, in quiet voice; and added in undertone, as if speaking to himself only: "God was there." "Do you feel that?" said Flossy, suddenly. "Then I wonder that you were not afraid." He turned toward her a pleasant face and said, earnestly:
"You would not be afraid of your father, would you? Well, God is my Father, my reconciled Father;" And then, after a moment, he added: "It I were not at peace with him, and had reason to think that he was angry with me, then it would be different. Then I suppose I should be afraid; at least I think it would be reasonable to be." Flossy spoke out of the fullness of a troubled heart:
"I don't understand it at all. I never wanted to, either, until just to-night; but now I want to feel as those people did when they sang that hymn." Marion came quickly up from the other side.
"Flossy," she said, with sudden sharpness, "come over here and watch the track of the boat through the water." And as Flossy mechanically obeyed, she added: "What a foolish, heedless little mouse you are! I wonder that your mother let you go from her sight. Don't you know that you mustn't get up conversations with strange young men in that fashion?" Flossy had not thought of it at all: but now she said a little drearily, as if the subject did not interest her:
"But I have often held conversations with strange young men at the dancing-hall, you know, and danced with them, too, when everything I knew about them was their names, and generally I forgot that." Marion gave a light laugh.
"That is different," she said, letting her lip curl in the darkness over the folly of her own words. "What its proper at a dance in very improper coming home from prayer-meeting, don't you see?" "What do you think!" she said the minute they were in their rooms. "There was I, leaning meditatively over the boat, thinking solemnly on the truths I had heard, and that absurd little water-proof morsel was having a flirtation with a nice young man. Here is one of the fruits of the system! What on earth was he saying to you, Flossy?" "Don't!" said Flossy, for the second time that evening. "He wasn't saying any harm." The whole thing jarred on her with an inexpressible and to her bewildering pain. She had always been ready for fun before.
"That girl is homesick or something," Marion said, as she and Eurie went to their rooms, leaving Flossy with Ruth, who prefered her as a room-mate to either of the others because she could keep from talking. "I haven't the least idea what is the matter, but she has been as unlike herself as possible. I hope she isn't going to get sick and spoil our fun. How silly we were to bring her, anyway. The baby hasn't life enough to see the frolic of the thing, and the intellectual is miles beyond her. I suspect she was dreadfully bored this evening. But, Eurie, there is going to be some splendid speaking done here. I shouldn't wonder if we attended a good many of the meetings."
