On leaving, Mr. Sergeant said that Canon Farrar was to preach the next day at Trinity and that if he might he would like to call and accompany me there. Had I been to Trinity yet? and heard Phillips Brooks? There would probably be a big crowd, so, if I pleased, he would call early, that we might be near the doors when they opened.
No, I—we—had not been to Trinity yet, I said, but that I—we—(with an inquiring glance at Belle) would be pleased to go. (I had not the slightest idea who Canon Farrar was, but did not ask.) Naming an early hour, and not including Belle, though I had, he took his leave. Belle was furious, declared she would not go, but did go when the hour came the next day.
There was a big crowd waiting by the closed doors of Trinity. Belle, being tall, was left to shift for herself in the crowd. I remember how pleasant it was—an utterly new sensation—to be piloted and shielded and gently pushed along in that well-bred crowd by my new acquaintance. Towering above me he smiled down indulgently as we were jostled this way and that. Soon I was swept off my feet and packed so closely that the crowd bore me along, Mr. Sargeant near by assuring me that there was no danger; that this was only the eagerness of the Bostonians to attend church. Presently the big doors opened; the surging mass of people carried me forward; in the vestibule I found my footing, and we were soon seated in the great, dark, holy Trinity.
We heard the English divine whose “Life of Christ” I have since read. His voice was not big enough to fill the church. I could not understand him, and was not at all impressed, but for other reasons the day was memorable. I was strangely moved by the church itself. When I go back to Boston now, one of the things I care most to do is to go down the little side street by which I approached, and come suddenly upon Trinity as I saw it that first day. The vine on its gray walls, the doves around its tower, the very stones in its huge pile, have an inexplicable charm for me; and within—it calmed and satisfied me; it seemed a worship in itself, that dim interior whose details gradually became discernible to my unsophisticated eyes. I question if any old-world cathedral could now have so profound an effect upon me as Trinity had on that girl fresh from village life, who had seen only the humble little churches of the home-town, or occasionally a more pretentious but commonplace church in a small city. Those glorious stained-glass windows! And the organ! Church and music stirred me, if the English divine did not.
(A few years ago, one summer day, I went into Trinity and sat long in the obscurity—the solitude, the silence, and the enveloping peace were inexpressibly soothing. I seemed again to feel the uplift that had always come on hearing Phillips Brooks. I thought of all that had happened to me since, as a girl, I used to hear him pour out his rapid, inspired utterances. How directly they always came to me! Tossed with doubt as I was, I never heard him without receiving help. For years he had been an uplifting influence in my life, and although I had never spoken to him, his death (when I was practising in U——) was a real loss to me—something precious then went out of my life.)
As we came out from Trinity that day, our new acquaintance proposed going into the Art Museum. Acquiescing promptly, I was annoyed to find that Belle was scandalized—“The Art Museum on Sunday! No, indeed!” And she and Mr. Sargeant began sparring, he getting very sarcastic and she very angry; but we ended by going in for a short stay, though the mental atmosphere was not propitious.
It was always a welcome break in my evenings of study when the gong would signal our room and “Theresa” the bell-girl, would announce through the tube, “Miss Arnold has a gentleman caller.” It was almost never any one but Mr. Sargeant. Down to the big reception room I would rush, eager to meet him, and not having artifice enough to conceal it, or not caring to. Other girls, receiving callers in the same room, would keep them waiting; and when they did come would enter with indifference and dignity, so unlike my prompt response to the signal. But we were both “Westerners” and understood frankness, while most of the young people there were from New England. Sometimes there would be several young men ranged around the room waiting. As each girl would appear, she would stand poised in the door-way till she discovered her caller, then, making directly for him, would be more or less oblivious to the others throughout the evening. We learned on entering the room to nod to the other “steady” callers, but there was seldom further interchange among us. As it neared ten o’clock, the young men would sit with watches in hand, talking up to the last minute, when “Theresa” would sound the gong; they would then start with a rush for the door, and we would hurry to our rooms with a pleased sense of almost having transgressed the rules; for there was but little time after that signal before lights had to be out throughout the building.
We had had a funny initiation, after the first two or three weeks in Boston, when we had moved from the Association building on Warrenton Street to the one on Berkeley Street. It was then that we came especially under the chaperonage of Miss Wilkins. That first night, at the table assigned us, we found some bright girls whom we recognized as students of some sort, as they evidently did us, but students of what, all were unaware. One fascinating girl, in a light, bantering manner, informed us of the rules and regulations of the place. We liked her vivacity, her gestures, her imitative powers. On learning that we had just come from the other building, she raised her eyes in reminiscent horror—she too, had been there. In a serio-comic way she expatiated on the disadvantages, with an exaggeration and dramatic power that won the whole table; she declared the lights had to be out at eight-thirty; that the tea-cups were hewn out of the solid rock; (they were the thickest cups I ever saw); and that no man’s voice had ever been heard in the sacred precincts. She then asked us how we had liked there, for in Boston they never say “How do you like it?” We told her we liked it well enough, but it was too far from our work, and too noisy to study much—that there had been several elocutionists who had ranted and howled so much that we found studying almost impossible. Her amusement at this egged Belle on; she grew vivacious in elaborating and rehearsing our tribulations on this score, becoming elated as they laughed gaily at her recital. And when we said that if by any chance the elocutionists gave us any peace, the musicians drummed and vocalized until the last state was worse than the first, fresh gales of laughter arose. Significant glances passed among our new acquaintances; and then the vivacious one solemnly warned us that she feared our trials had but begun; for here, she said, in addition to elocutionists and musicians who infested the place, there were night prowlers—medical students whose midnight calls disturbed the whole house. If we heard the door-bell ring vigorously at unseemly hours we must not think it meant fire or other catastrophe—it would only be the summons of the “medics” to their nocturnal sprees. All this was mingled with frank and rather disparaging comments about women medical students; and by unfeigned rejoicing when someone volunteered that a bunch of the “medics” had left yesterday; and that the staid spinster whom they pointed out to us at another table (our own Miss Wilkins) was the only one of the obnoxious ilk remaining. Belle and I exchanged glances but held our peace. But on stepping into the elevator, our table-mates with us, Miss Wilkins came also, with the matron, and there introduced us to that sober lady as her class-mates who had come over to-day from the other building, so as to be with her, and nearer the College. Our new acquaintances, astonished at this disclosure, and a bit discomfited, soon rallied; the vivacious one declared that we were now even, since she and her room-mate were elocutionist and musician respectively, and that the others at our table belonged mostly to one or the other of those reprehensible classes.
A delightful friendship grew out of all this; especially with the two girls from Maine. Agnes, the vivacious one, was studying elocution; Anna, the staid, music—the one all life and vigour; the other quiet, sombre, phlegmatic. The sprightly Agnes would amuse us by stirring up her chum—poking her in the ribs, she would say, “Anna, Anna, animation!” and Anna would laugh and blush and rouse herself to please her whimsical friend. They went with us on Saturday afternoons on our sight-seeing expeditions, and to lectures, concerts, and church; and in the evening, for the half-hour after supper, we usually allowed ourselves a chat in their room, or in ours, before buckling down to study. They were curious about our work, as were we about theirs. It was fun to hear Agnes, who attended the Brown School of Oratory, exalt it at the expense of the Emerson school; and to see her toss her head, and watch her nostrils dilate, when she argued with the Emerson girls. Sometimes we went to their recitals. Anna used to play for me by the hour, when I had time to listen, shyly pleased that her music pleased me; she was too susceptible to anything I said or did, and would have formed one of those extravagant friendships of which we were seeing so many in Boston, had I been so minded.
Our life at the Y. W. C. A. building had much in common with boarding-school life—though less restricted in many ways—a community of women, its walls seldom echoed to a man’s step or voice, except in the evening when callers came. It sounded good to hear the deep tones of “Dan,” the janitor, when he brought trunks to the rooms, or was otherwise called up from the basement. Even the elevator-boy was a girl.