West Lawn, and The rector of St. Mark's

by Mary Jane Holmes

Through the rich curtains which shaded the windows of a room looking out on Fifth Avenue the late October sun was shining; and as its red light played among the flowers on the carpet, a pale young girl sat watching it and thinking of the Hanover hills, now decked in their autumnal glory, and of the ivy on St. Mark’s, growing so bright and beautiful beneath the autumnal frosts. Anna had been very sick since that morning in September when she sat on the piazza at the Ocean House and read Lucy Harcourt’s letter. The faint was a precursor of fever, the physician said when summoned to her aid; and in a tremor of fear and distress Mrs. Meredith had had her removed at once to New York, and that was the last Anna remembered. From the moment her aching head had touched the soft pillows in Aunt Meredith’s home, all consciousness had fled, and for weeks she had hovered so near to death that the telegraph-wires bore daily messages to Hanover, where the aged couple who had cared for her since her childhood wept, and prayed, and watched for tidings from their darling. They could not go to her, for Grandpa Humphreys had broken his leg, and his wife could not leave him; so they waited with what patience they could for the daily bulletins which Mrs. Meredith sent, appreciating their anxiety, and feeling glad withal of anything which kept them from New York.

“She had best be prayed for in church,” the old man said; and so, Sunday after Sunday, Arthur read the prayer for the sick, his voice trembling as it had never trembled before, and a keener sorrow in his heart than he had ever known when saying the solemn words.

Heretofore the persons prayed for had been comparative strangers,—people in whom he felt only the interest a pastor feels in all his flock; but now it was Anna, whose case he took to God, and he always smothered a sob during the moment he waited for the fervent response the congregation made, the Amen which came from the pew where Lucy sat being louder and heartier than all the rest, and having in it a sound of the tears which dropped so fast on Lucy’s book, as she asked that her dear friend might not die. Oh, how he longed to go to her! But this he could not do, and so he had sent Lucy, who bent so tenderly above the sick girl, whispering loving words in her ear, and dropping kisses upon the lips which uttered no response, save once, when Lucy said, “Do you remember Arthur?”

Then they murmured faintly: “Yes,—Arthur,—I remember him, and the Christmas song, and the gathering in the church. But that was long ago; there’s much happened since then.”

“And I am to marry Arthur,” Lucy had said again; but this time there was no sign that she was understood, and that afternoon she went back to Hanover loaded with tickets for the children of St. Mark’s and new books for the Sunday-school, and accompanied by Valencia, who, having had a serious difference with her mistress, Mrs. Meredith, had offered her services to Miss Harcourt, and been at once accepted.

That was near the middle of October; now it was the last, and Anna was so much better that she sat up for an hour or more and listened with some degree of interest to what Mrs. Meredith told her of the days when she lay so unconscious of all that was passing around her, never heeding the kindly voice of Thornton Hastings, who more than once had stood by her pillow with his hand on her feverish brow, and tokens of whose thoughtfulness were visible in the choice bouquets he sent each day, with notes of anxious inquiry when he did not come himself. Anna had not seen him yet since her convalescence. She would rather not see any one until strong enough to talk, she said. And so Thornton waited patiently for the interview she had promised him when she should be stronger, but every day he sent her fruit, and flowers, and books which he thought would interest her, and which always made her cheeks grow hot and her heart beat regretfully, for she knew of the answer she must give him when he came, and she shrank from wounding him.

“He is too good, too noble, to have an unwilling wife,” she thought; but that did not make it the less hard to tell him so, and when at last she was well enough to see him, she waited his coming nervously, starting when she heard his step, and trembling like a leaf as he drew near her chair.

It was a very thin, wasted hand which he took in his, holding it for a moment between his own, and then laying it gently back upon her lap. He had come for the answer to a question put six weeks before, and Anna gave it to him,—kindly, considerately, but decidedly. She could not be his wife, she said, because she did not love him as he ought to be loved.

“It is nothing personal,” she added, working nervously at the heavy fringe of her shawl. “I respect you more than any man I ever knew,—except one; and had I met you years ago,—before—before—”