Over and over again—not what Van had ever fancied a prayer could be, and yet to his ear more full of intense personal pleading than any prayer he had ever heard. Faith, hope, love, expectation, keen desire, and suffering were all summed up in two words; and though he knew nothing of her trouble, yet when the aunt’s call for her came from the room within, Van started as if he had been struck. He could not bear to have her harried back into the dull life of her home.
“Just mend this, Janey, will you?” Mrs. Escott said, exhibiting a coarse blue shirt. “Your uncle wants it for to-morrow.”
The girl’s face was tranquil and happy again by some sudden transformation. She took the rough work—it was not clean work, either; it had evidently been worn once or twice, Van saw with mingled disgust and pity—and, sitting down contentedly in the dingy room, she began her mending. She puzzled Van greatly, she interested him intensely. As he talked to her uncle he watched with his artistically-trained eye each expression of her face. It varied now and then, though the strange, yearning look did not return to it. The peace was there, and an exquisite happiness.
“She is like a dove,” thought Van. “She is like an innocent baby. Oh! if one could take her away from this.”
But one clue to her character he was certain that he had found. He rose up before she finished her work, and he flung open the old piano and sat down before it. It was not so unfit for use as he had feared it would be, and he knew how to glide skilfully over the worst notes. And then he began to try Jane. First he sang ballads, “Robin Adair,” “John Anderson my jo, John,” “Oh! wert thou in the cauld blast.”
“That’s fine, Phœbe,” said Jacob, and Phœbe said “Yes” with an unwonted enthusiasm. But Jane worked steadily on, and if she heard or cared Van could not tell, though he fancied the sweet, dove-like look deepened upon her face.
“The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.”
The last tender notes of the song lingered under Van’s fingers, as a knock was heard at the kitchen door, and Jacob went to answer it, followed soon by Phœbe, who evidently recognized the voice of the new-comer. There was a scraping of chairs on the kitchen floor—the plain indication that somebody had come to stay awhile. Van leaned his head forward against the music-rack, and once again before his eyes was the scene he had witnessed in the twilight one hour before. Could the same person who sat quietly at her rough work now be she whom he had seen and heard then in that passion of prayer? And while he mused there rang through his brain echoes that always thrilled his music-loving, art-loving nature with an especial power, and that seemed now like fit mates for the darkly-heaving sea, the star-lit sky, the girl’s yearning face; and from the old ivory keys, that grew strangely full of power and sweetness beneath his magical touch, rang out Chopin’s grand funeral march.
The work dropped from Jane’s hands. He could not watch her face, for she turned it straight toward that eastern flower-decked window that looked out to gulf and sea; but he saw her fingers lock tightly into one another and her form become rigidly still. When he ended she rose quietly and went away, and he did not see her again that night.