The Girl from the Big Horn Country

by Mary Ellen Chase

“The world is a very strange place. God may be no respecter of persons, but people are. It is a very sad thing to be obliged to believe, but I am afraid it is true.”

The next morning the two Vigilantes, obtaining permission to walk to church a little earlier than the others, stopped by the roadside at the spot where yesterday Virginia had noted suspicious behavior, and thoroughly investigated. A rough path had apparently been recently broken through the alders. At the end of the path by the fence stood a big, white birch, and on the smooth side of the birch farthest from the road were many pin-pricks. One pin remained in the tree, and it still held a tiny scrap of white paper, apparently the corner of a sheet, the rest of which had been hurriedly torn away. The Vigilantes, thinking busily, went on to church. It is needless to say that they found it difficult to listen to the morning’s sermon.

CHAPTER XV—VESPER SERVICE

The Sunday following the Vigilantes’ mysterious discovery by the roadside, and immediately preceding the Easter holidays, was Palm Sunday. It dawned beautiful—warm and sunny as a late spring clay—and as the hours followed one another, each seemed more lovely than the last. Song sparrows sang from budding alder bushes, and robins flew hither and thither among the elms and maples, seeking suitable notches in which to begin their homes. As if by magic, purple and golden crocuses lifted their tiny faces on the southern sides of the cottage lawns; and the buds of the lilac trees, warmed and encouraged by yesterday’s showers, burst into leaf before one’s very eyes.

The world seemed especially joyous to the girls, as they roamed the woods in search of wild flowers, or sought about the campus for fresh evidences of spring. The long winter months had gone; Easter home-going was but five days away; and when they returned after two weeks at home, spring would have really come, bringing with it all the joys and festivities and sadnesses of the Commencement season.

At four o’clock, as the westward-moving sun gleamed through the pines, and fell in wavering lights and shadows on the brown needles beneath, they gathered for their vesper service, coming from all directions, their hands filled with pussy-willows, hepaticas, and mayflowers, their faces glowing with health and happiness, in their eyes the old miracle of the spring. To Virginia, as to many of the others, this Sunday afternoon hour was the dearest of the week. She loved the gray-stone, vine-covered Retreat, and its little chapel within; she loved the sound of its organ, and the voices of the girls singing; and most of all, she loved the little talks which Miss King gave on Sunday afternoons—dear, close, helpful talks of things which she had learned, and by which she hoped to make life sweeter for her girls.

To-day the chapel was especially lovely, for the altar rail was banked with palms, Easter lilies stood upon the white-covered altar, and the sun, shining through the high, narrow windows, flooded all with golden light. Virginia sat between Dorothy and Priscilla, holding a hand of each. It was so lovely to be there together! In her secret heart she was glad that Imogene’s mother had sent for her to come home the day before, for when Imogene was away Dorothy seemed to belong again to them.

Since St. Helen’s held no Easter service, as the girls were always at home, Miss King spoke to-day of Easter—how it had always seemed to her the real beginning of the New Year; how it signified the leaving off of the old and the putting on of the new; how it meant the awakening of new thoughts, and the renewed striving after better things.

“So, if we could only understand,” she said in closing, while the girls listened earnestly, “that Easter is far more than a commemoration, that it is a condition of our hearts, then we should, I think, reverence the day rightly. For as beautiful as is the story of the risen Christ, we do not keep Easter sacred merely by the remembrance of that story. The risen Christ is as nothing to us unless in our own hearts the Christ spirit rises—the spirit of love and service, of unselfishness and goodness. When that spirit awakens within us, then comes our Easter day. It may be many days throughout the year; it might be—if we could only rightly appreciate our lives—it might be every day. For every day is a fresh beginning, an Easter day, when we may decide to cast off the old and to put on the new, the old habits of selfishness and jealousy, of insincerity and thoughtlessness—all those petty, little things that mar our lives; and to put on our new and whiter robes of unselfishness and simple sincerity. If the thousands who next Sunday morning will sing of the risen Christ, might all experience within themselves their own Easter mornings, then this world of ours would have realized its resurrection.

“Let the hepaticas which you hold in your hands give you the only Easter lesson worth the learning—the lesson which your pagan forefathers in the forests of Germany taught their children centuries ago on their own Easter festival. You know how each spring the clusters beneath the pines are larger, if you are careful as you pick the blossoms not to disturb the roots. The long months of fall and winter are not months of sleep and rest for the hepaticas. Beneath the snow in the winter silence they are at work, sending out their rootlets through the brown earth, avoiding the rocks and sandy places, but taking firm hold upon that which will nourish them best. Thus do they grow year by year, at each Easter time showing themselves larger and more beautiful than the spring before.