Now suddenly the church bells, the chimes, burst forth and tossed high their ringing notes into the pellucid air, sweet reminders to the Great-All Father that His children, sinning, bewildered, yet loving, trusting still, were gathering from afar to kneel and humbly pray together; remembering well those words big with promise: “When two or three are gathered together in my name!”
And among the moving multitude, two women from opposite sides of the city were approaching the same church. Both were middle-aged, and both felt that, in the better sense, their lives were over. Both were victims of the war; both had lost their nearest and dearest; and one, her home as well. And now, among strangers, she wore her rusty crêpe with a dignified, almost haughty carriage of body, which, nevertheless, said plainly: “Here is the poverty which is so cruel to the well-bred and refined!” She worked to eke out her small pittance of an income, but there was no sweetness, no savor in her work. She knew she was growing hard and bitter in her sorrow and loneliness, but what did it matter now; there was no dear one to be wounded by her sarcastic speech. “A childless widow!” she murmured, “why do I encumber the earth? There is no living thing that needs me, that is glad of my coming,” and she shuddered in her thin, black garments as she thought of the years that, dull and cold, might be waiting her, and then saw the church, and tried to bring her thoughts under control.
The other woman (she who sighed to wear black), moving slowly and heavily, wondered why neither the bright, warm sun nor the heavy, handsome camel’s-hair shawl in which, to the surprise of her neighbors, she was closely wrapped this warm day, could conquer that little, creeping chill in her blood that every now and then developed into a shiver. But she gave that matter scant thought. Weary and dull to her, the very bells seemed to ring out over and over again the one word, “A-lone! A-lone!”
She had her comfortable, even handsome, home; ample means to keep it up, but it was so empty! There was no one to watch for, to dress for, to plan for, cook for! No one to give her greeting, or loving thanks for loving service. She was utterly alone, and she was only forty-four, and might live—good God! how long? If it were not unlawful so to do, she would kneel here in the church she was entering and pray to die at once, that she might fill her appointed place between her husband and her son, and be at rest.
With such thoughts, these women approached the church and each other. Foolish, wicked thoughts, you say. Perhaps, but for a woman who is growing old, whose heart is bleeding from many wounds, it is so hard a thing to face the great world alone. But so it came about that as Mrs. Martha Swift, of Ohio, sat in pew 71, an usher waved into pew 72 Mrs. Marion Wallace, of Georgia, who was no sooner comfortably seated than a quick shiver shaking the shoulders of the woman in front of her drew her attention to the shoulders and to the shawl about them. And then an odd thing happened. Her glance, at first a merely casual one, had quickly intensified into a prolonged and piercing stare. Then she had raised her veil and studied the shawl as if it had been the horoscope of one she loved; studied it until from the seeming confusion of the innumerable morsels of rich, dim colors tossed together, there came order and a clear design. Then, to the wonderment of two or three observers, she drew off her glove and, leaning forward, passed her bare forefinger eagerly along the edge of that bit of solid color always found in the centre of these precious shawls; did it carefully, as does a woman who searches for some faint stain or mark, and suddenly the blood rushed to her face; she drew back swiftly into her place, resumed her glove, but from “Dearly Beloved,” clear through to “Let Your Light so Shine,” she never took her eyes from that shawl in front of her.
As Mrs. Swift passed out of church, she thought herself rather unnecessarily crowded by a tall woman in black. She answered two or three friendly comments on her bundled-up appearance by saying that, “heavy shawl and all, she was still cold, at least part of the time,” and, “yes, come to think of it, she was shivering half her time yesterday”; “yes, it was a lovely day,” and so slipped away as quickly as she could, and started to walk across the Public Square, that she might be alone; and then a woman in black was at her side—a woman whose eyes were big and bright with anger; whose trembling finger tapped her on the arm, as she swiftly said: “Madam, this shawl is not your property; it is mine!”
Mrs. Swift was so startled—so utterly taken aback—that at first she could only stare at the stranger and say, stupidly: “What—what did you say?”
And the stranger, in increasing anger, repeated: “This shawl is not your property—it is mine, I tell you! My most precious treasure—mine—and I can prove it, too, by marks you cannot gainsay!”
But Mrs. Swift drew away from the tapping finger, exclaiming: “Do you know who you are talking to? You must be crazy! Why, I’ve owned this shawl these five years!”
“Five years?” scornfully cried the other, “I owned it long enough to know its full design—the dealer’s private mark—that my boy showed me when he brought it to me from his first trip abroad—and in the corner, here on the under side, beneath a rough seam in the border, you will find two letters worked in white silk—an ‘M’ and a ‘W,’ and beneath them both a tiny star in many-colored threads. See, then—” She caught swiftly at the corner of the shawl nearest her—turned it back—scanned it closely, and then triumphantly pointed out two small, imperfect letters in white silk—“M” and “W,” with the star beneath, as she had said.