A Furnace of Earth

by Hallie Erminie Rives

III.

In the pause before the service began, Margaret’s eyes drifted aimlessly about the dim body of the small but pretentious seaside chapel. It held the same incongruous gathering so often to be seen at coast resorts, a mingling of ultra-fashionable summer visitors, and homely and uncomfortably well-dressed village folk. There was Mrs. Atherton, whose bounty had elevated the parish from a threadbare existence, with simple service and plain altar furniture, to a devout adherence to High Church methods, with candles and rich vestments, and a never-failing welcome for stylish visiting clergymen from the city; there was the wife of the proprietor of the Beach Hotel, whose costumes were always faithful second editions of Mrs. Atherton’s; there were the rector’s two daughters and the usual sprinkling of familiar faces that she had passed on the drive or the beach walk.

The lawn outside was shimmering with the heat that had followed an over-night shower, and the pewed calm oppressed her. Her limbs were nettled with teasing pricks of restlessness.

The open windows let in a heavy, drenched rose-odor, tinged with a distant salt smell of sea. The air was weighted with it—it was the same mingled odor that had filled her nostrils when she stood with Daunt on the shore, with the wet wind in their faces and fluttering petals of the crushed roses she had worn staining the dun sand and crisp, strown seaweed like great drops of blood. It overpowered her senses. She breathed it deeply, feeling a delicious intoxication, and its suggested memory ran through her veins like an ethereal ichor, tingling to her finger ends.

Her eyes, heavy and swimming, were full of the iridescent colors of the stained-glass window opposite, with the dull yellow aureole about the head of the central figure. The hues wove and blended in a background of subdued harmony, lending life and seeming movement to the features.

“A man somewhat tall and comely, his hair the color of a ripe chestnut, curling and waving.” The description recurred to her, not as though written to the Roman Senate by Lentulus, Governor of Judea, but as if printed in bossed letters about the rim of the picture. “In the middle of his head a seam parteth it, after the manner of the Nazarites. His forehead is plain and very delicate, his face without spot or wrinkle, beautified with a lovely red; his nose and mouth of charming symmetry. His look is very innocent and mature; his eyes gray, clear and quick. His body is straight and well proportioned, his hands and arms most delectable to behold.”

“His eyes gray, clear and quick.” From the window they followed her—the eyes that had looked into hers on the beach, full of longing light—the eyes that had charmed her and had seemed to draw up her soul to look back at them.

She dragged her gaze away with a quick shudder, to a realization of her surroundings. A paining recoil seized her at the temerity of her thought, and her imaginings shrank within themselves. A vivid shame bathed her soul. She felt half stifled.

The dulled and droning intonation of the reader came to her as something banal and shop-worn. He was large and heavy-voiced. His hair was sandy and thin, and his skin was of that peculiar pallor and pursiness bred of lack of exercise and a full diet. It reminded her irresistibly of pink plush. He had a double chin, and he intoned with eyes cast down, and his large hands clasped before him, after the fashion affected by the higher church. His monotonous and nasal utterance glossed the periods with unctuous and educated mispronunciation. The congregation was punctuated with nodding heads.