XXVIII.
Helen’s happy heart proved prophet; so they said, and smiled. For there was no mob. Sunday dawned like a dream. The sun rode up without cloud or fire. The sea carried its cool, June colors. The harbor wore her sweetest face. The summer people, like figures on a gay Japanese fan, moved brightly across the rocks and piers; Bayard and Helen looked out of the windows of the Flying Jib, and watched them with that kindness of the heart for the interests of strangers which belongs to joy alone. A motionless fleet lay in the harbor, opening its silvery wings to dry them in the Sunday sun.
The fishermen had hurried home by scores to witness the dedication. Everybody had a smile for the preacher’s bride,—the boarder on the rocks, the fisherman from the docks.
Every child or woman to whom she had ever done a kindness in her inexperienced, warm-hearted fashion, remembered it and her that day. She wore the unornamented cream-white silk dress in which she had been married; for Bayard asked it.
“The people will like to see you so,” he said. “It will give them a vision.”
All the town was alive and alert. The argument of success, always the cogent one to the average mind, was peculiarly effective in Windover. People who had never given the mission a thought before, and people who had given it many, but never a kindly one, looked at the doors of the new chapel, smothered in wild Cape roses for the solemn gala, and said: “That affair in Angel Alley seems to prosper, spite of everything. There may be something in it, after all.”
It was expected that the churches themselves, though reserved on the subject, would be better represented at Christlove that evening, than they cared to be; for the young people were determined to see the dedication, and would pair off in scores to Angel Alley, leaving their elders behind, to support the ecclesiastical foundations in decorum and devotion, as by the creed and confession bound.
The attendance of other audiences was not encouraged, however, by the pastor in Angel Alley; his own would more than fill the chapel. All the little preparations of the people went on quietly, and he brought them, as it was his will to do, without weariness or worry, to the evening. He wished the dedication of his chapel to be free from the fret and care which turn so many of our religious festivals into scrambles,—I had almost said, shambles, for the harm they do to exhausted women, and to careworn men.
The day passed easily. Bayard himself, though moving under deep excitement, gave no evidence of it. He was as quiet as the Saint Michael in the picture, whose foot was on the dragon, and whose head was in the skies.