The calm happiness which encompassed the lives of Mabella and Lanty lay like a benediction upon the house, and the hearts beneath its benison rested for the moment like a congregation hushed after the last Amen, and not yet surrendered again to the worldly cares and sordid joys which wait without the sanctuary doors.
But as one of the peaceful congregation may writhe in the hair shirt of personal perplexity, so Vashti Lansing beneath her calm smile suffered agonies in those days.
Is there any torture more poignant than the cry of “Peace, Peace” when there is no Peace?
She was very pale, the insolently perfect oval of her face had fined a little, there was a hint of a break in the suave curve of her cheek, and this, albeit an imperfection, lent her beauty a new and subtle charm of appeal.
She was very quiet, too, and now and then a tender wistfulness dimmed her eyes, softening the majesty of her brow alluringly. When Sidney saw this he felt his heart go out to her more strongly than ever.
“Unconsciously,” he said to himself, “her sweet, strong nature covets the joy of loving and being loved”; and there welled up within him that indulgent and protective tenderness which all good men feel for the women they love.
Vashti Lansing had never appeared so gentle, so womanly, so good, as at this juncture when all the evil within her was rising, and gathering, and forming into malevolent purposes. Some deadly creatures take to themselves the semblance of flowers that they may sting their victims unaware.
Mabella and Lanty were together continually. It was very pretty to see her shy eagerness for his coming, his open happiness at her presence. Temperance was always busy with her housework, to which was added now the cutting and hemming of Mabella’s household linen. For Temperance had long saved egg-money and butter-money for such an emergency, and, delighted at the prospective union of her two favourites, she fell to the work eagerly. Mabella tried to help, but her usually busy fingers were rather idle during those first halcyon days. She let her hands fall in her lap with the needle between her fingers, and slipped away into a dream, leaving all earthly considerations far behind. If a word or a smile reminded her that mortals were peeping into her paradise, she would rise and steal away to the little shadowy room, from the windows of which she had seen him waiting in Mullein meadow, and there, chiding herself for over great delight, she would strive to bring down her great joy to the basis of every-day fact. “We love each other,” she would say, stating the fact in bold terms, “we love each other,” and by the time she had said it twice her face would shine again with the glory of the thought, and the words ceased to become words to her, and became only the sighing of Love’s mouth. What a simple figure Mabella Lansing presents upon the little stage whereon these people trod, beside the splendid and forceful personality of her cousin Vashti! What an ordinary and commonplace product of ordinary and commonplace conditions Lanty Lansing seems beside Sidney Martin, supersensitive, morbidly idealistic, a Sir Galahad, bearing the white flower of a stainless life and giving it into the hands of a wicked woman to work her will upon it!
Yet though the love of Mabella and Lanty was but “the homespun dream of simple folk,” still the very gladness of it makes it precious in this world, where even the divine passion has grown a little hum-drum, and where the ashes lie whitely upon the divine fires.
But perhaps the world will shake off its lethargy when the new century begins, and even now there may be smiling in his cradle the Shakespeare whose breath shall blow the embers again into flame. Surely it is simple, natural kindly souls like Mabella and Lanty who perpetuate fidelity, honour and trust upon the earth; and eager, pure, unselfish souls like Sidney Martin who transmit the glorious impetus of aspiration from one generation to another.