As they entered the parlor, they surprised a little domestic tableau. The door leading to an inner room was partly open, and braced against a chair in which were a pail of steaming water and a bar of soap. Sister Bernadette, the chief music-teacher, held the door-knob in one hand, while with the other she was vigorously scouring the panels. Her sleeves were rolled up to the shoulders, a large apron covered her from chin to slipper, and her veil was removed. As she scoured, her full, sweet face was uplifted, and her large blue eyes watched the success of her labor with perfect earnestness and good-will.
A burst of laughter revealed the spectators to her. Mr. Gerald stood just within the room, bowing profoundly, with gravity and some diffidence, but the two ladies were thoroughly amused.
“Would you not think,” cried Sister Cecilia, “that she expected to see that dingy old door turn between her hands into the great pearl of the New Jerusalem gate? You certainly did expect a miracle, Bernadette.”
Sister Bernadette’s blush was but momentary, only the rapid color of surprise that faded away in dimples as she smiled. Her sleeves were pulled down and her veil snatched on in a trice, and she went to meet their visitors with an air that would have adorned a drawing-room.
“Sister is a witch,” she said. “I was thinking of the gates of the New Jerusalem, though not expecting a miracle.”
This lady, whom we find scrubbing a door, with her sleeves rolled up, was the child of wealth and gentle blood. She had beauty, talents, and culture, and her life had been without a cloud, save those light ones that only enhance the surrounding brightness. Yet she had turned away from the world, not in bitterness and disappointment, nor because it was to her unbeautiful, but because its fragments of beauty served only to remind her of the infinite loveliness. She had not Sister Cecilia’s enthusiasm; but her heart was a fountain for ever full of love, and cheerfulness, and a gentle courage. She seemed to live in a sunny, spiritual calm above the storms of life.
After a few graceful words, she took leave, promising to send Anita to them. Miss Ferrier wished Mr. Gerald to hear the girl play on the piano, and Miss Ferrier was a benefactor to their community, and, therefore, a person to be obliged. Otherwise they might not have thought it profitable for the child to receive a morning-call from fashionable people who were neither related to nor intimate with her.
Anita came in presently, as a moonbeam comes in when you lift the curtain at night. Softly luminous and without sound, it is there. This girl was rather small and dark-haired, and had a dazzling fairness of complexion to which her simple brown dress was in admirable contrast. Her eyes were blue and almost always downcast, as if she would wish to hide that full, unsteady radiance that shone out through them. Nothing could have been more charming than her manner—timid without awkwardness, and showing that innocent reserve of a child which springs neither from fear nor distrust. She met Miss Ferrier sweetly, but was not the first to extend her hand; and Annette’s kiss, to which she only submitted, left a red spot on her cheek which lingered for some time after. She was one of those sensitive flowers that shrink from the lightest touch. No love was delicate enough for her except that ineffable love of the “Spouse of virgins.”
Lawrence Gerald watched her with enchantment. The immense gravity and respect of her salutation to him had made him smile. It was a new study for him. How sunburnt and hackneyed Annette seemed beside this fair little cloistered snowdrop! Poor Annette, with her grieved and disappointed heart, which surely had not chosen the rough ways of the world, and would gladly have been loved and shielded as this girl had been, received scant charity from the man whose sole hope she was. So are our misfortunes imputed to us as crimes!
Anita played admirably on the piano, turning the music for herself. After her first gentle refusal of his help, Lawrence did not venture to press the matter, fearing to alarm her timidity; but he seated himself near, and, affecting not to observe her, watched every movement.