Two or three songs, carols, anthems, and the lesson was over. Now for the reward. It came promptly, and was worth more than the gifts of others.
"You have all done excellently well. I knew you would. If I had found myself mistaken, it would have been a great disappointment. 'T is a great thing to be able to sing such verses as if you were eye-witnesses of what you repeat. That is precisely what you do. Now you may go. Go quietly."
She looked at them all as she spoke; it was a broad, comprehensive glance, but they all felt individualized by it. Then they came, the six lads, with their bright, handsome faces, pride of a mother's heart every one, and took her hand, and carried away, each one, her kiss upon his forehead. Not one of them but had been blest beyond expression in the few half-hours they had been gathered under the instruction of the organist. So they went off, carrying her precious praise with them.
They had scarcely gone, and the organist was yet searching for a sheet of music, when a step was in the aisle, noiseless, rapid, and a young girl came into the singers' seat.
"Am I too early?" she asked,—for her welcome was not immediate, and her courtesy was not just now of the quality that overlooked a seeming lack of it in others. Miss Ives was slightly out of tune.
"Not at all," was the answer. Still it was spoken in a very preoccupied way that might have been provoking,—that would depend on the mood of the person addressed; and that mood, as we know, was not sun-clear or marble-smooth. The organist had now found the music she was looking for, and proceeded to play it from the first page to the last, without vouchsafing an instant's recognition of the singer's presence.
When she had finished, she sat a moment silent; then she turned straight toward Miss Ives, and smiled, and it was a smile that could atone for any amount of seeming incivility.
But not even David, by mere sweep of harp-string, soothed self-beleaguered Saul.
Teacher and pupil did not seem to understand each other as it was best such women should. For, let the swaying, surging hosts throughout the valley deliver themselves as they can from the confusion of tongues, the wanderers among the mountains ought to understand the signals they see flaring from crag and gorge and pinnacle.
Too many shadowy folds were in the mystery that hung about each of these women to satisfy the other: reticence too cold, independence too extreme, self-possession too entire. Why was neither summoned, in a frank, impulsive way, to take up the burden of the other? Was nothing ever to penetrate the seven-walled solitude in which the organist chose to intrench herself? Was nobody ever to bid roses bloom on the colorless face of the singer, and bring smiles, the veritable smiles of youth, and of happiness, into those large, steady, joyless eyes?