Such, then, in brief, was the scene that greeted her sad eyes that morning. How utterly homesick and disheartened she was! It was all so different from the surroundings to which she had all her life been accustomed! She closed her eyes to hide the rush of tears, and to think, foolish girl that she was, of that other church miles and miles away. She could seem to see familiar forms gliding at this moment down the aisles, whose rich carpets gave back no sound of footfall. How soft and clear the colors of that carpet were! A suggestion of the delicately carpeted woods, and the shimmer of sunlight on a summer day toward the sun setting. She had helped to select that carpet herself, and she knew that she had an artist's eye for colors and for harmony. It was not an extravagantly elegant church—as city churches rank—that one to which her heart went back, but just one of those exquisitely finished buildings where every bit of color and carving and design which meet the cultured eye, rests and satisfies. Where the law of harmony touches the delicately frescoed ceiling, reaches down to the luxuriously upholstered pews, finds its home in the trailing vines of the carpet, and breathes out in the roll of the deep-toned organ.
It was in such a church, down such a broad and friendly aisle, that Claire Benedict had been wont to follow her father and mother on Sabbath mornings, keeping step to the melody which seemed to steal of itself from the organ, and fill the lofty room. Can you imagine something of the contrast?
CHAPTER V.
TRYING TO ENDURE.
OF course there were other contrasts than those suggested by the two churches which persisted in presenting themselves to this lonely girl.
How could she help remembering that in the old home she had been Sidney Benedict's daughter? A fact which of itself gave her place and power in all the doings of the sanctuary. Alas for the changes that a few brief months can make!
Sidney Benedict lying in his grave, and his daughter an obscure music-teacher in an obscure boarding and day school; an object to be stared at, and pointed out by the villagers as the new teacher.
But for another contrast, which from some divine source stole over her just then, the hot tears which burned her eyes would surely have fallen. Sidney Benedict was not sleeping in the grave; that was only the house of clay in which he had lived. She knew, and suddenly remembered it with a thrill, that his freed soul was in Heaven. What did that mean? she wondered. In vain her imagination tried to paint the contrast. There had been times since his going when she had longed with all the passion of her intense nature to know by actual experience just what Heaven is. But these were cowardly moments. Generally, she had been able to feel thankful that she was here to help mamma and Dora. She remembered this now, along with the memory of her father's joy, and it helped her to choke back the tears, and struggle bravely with her homesickness.
Meantime, it was hard for her to forget that she was the observed of all observers. But she did not half understand why this was so. She could not know what a rare bit of beauty she looked in the dingy church; almost like a ray of brightness astray from another world.