“I am Dr. Craig,” he said, “rector of Trinity parish. I heard that Mrs. Drennen had a cousin visiting her, and I came out to ask you to come to our Sabbath services. We haven’t as ambitious a choir, perhaps, as you have in your city church,” he said, smiling, “—though we have one tenor voice which I think quite remarkable—but we offer the same message and just as warm a welcome.”
Her loneliness had wanted just such a greeting. “I shall be glad to come!” she answered. “I passed the church only yesterday and sat awhile in the porch to rest. It is so peaceful, set among the trees!”
“You seemed entirely out of the world as I walked up the path,” he said. “I could almost see you think.”
“I was looking at this.” She pointed to the clustering vines.
“What an audacious climber! Its berries have the color of rubies. And a wistaria, too!”
“I was thinking when you came,” she continued hesitatingly, “what a pity it was that the two should have ever grown together. The wistaria has an odor like far-away incense, and its leaves are tender and delicate-veined, like a climbing soul. The nightshade is dark green and its berries are sin-color. They don’t belong together, and now nobody in the world could ever pull them apart without killing them both. Isn’t it a pity?”
“Ah, there is where I think you err! That bold, aspiring sap is just what the pallid wistaria needs. Its perfume is less insipid for the mingling earth-smell of the other. It climbs higher and reaches further for the other’s strength. The flora of nature follows the same great law as humanity. Opposite elements combine to make the strongest men and women. One of the most valuable, I think, of the suggestions we get from the vegetable creation is the thought of its comprehensive good. Nothing that is useful is bad, and there is nothing that has not its use. What we know is, the higher grows and develops by means of the lower.” His fine face lifted as he spoke with conscious dignity.
To Margaret, in the untiring challenge of her self-questionings, his view brought an unworded solace. Her mind grasped eagerly at his thought, puzzled by itself, yet reaching for the visible spirituality of the man. His face, calm and with a tinge of almost priestly asceticism, was a tacit reassurance. A wish to hear him speak, to talk to him, came to her. He had lived longer than she, he knew so much more! If she could only ask him! If she only knew how to begin! If some instinct could only whisper to his mind’s ear the benumbing question her whole being battled with, without her having to put it into words! Even if she could—even if he could guess it—he might misunderstand. No girl ever had such thoughts before! They were only hers—only hers, to hide, to bury in silence! She blushed hotly to think that she had ever thought of voicing it to the air. A guilty horror, lest her face might betray what she was thinking, bathed her. She could never, never tell it! There could be no help from outside. Her mind must struggle with it alone.
She started visibly, with a feeling that she had been overheard, at a crunching step behind them. Her companion greeted the arrival with the heartiness of an old acquaintance.
“Ah, Condy,” he said, “much obliged for that salve of yours. It has quite made a new dog of Birdo.”