“May I go too?” he said, the gay, trifling manner gone, and that peculiarly distinct imprint of a clean heart shining in his eyes. Lifting her own sweet eyes, once again he felt that she read him through; then, saying nothing, she bowed assent and stepped into the boat. And still without a word she let him take the oars from her, and, drawing her rosary from her pocket, she began to tell her beads. Van thought she never would stop, and she did not till they reached the town. Still silent, she led the way from the shore through some dull, shell-paved paths to a small chapel, and, entering, forgot Van altogether and went with eager footsteps up the aisle. Van stationed himself where he could see her; she sank on her knees before the altar, and crossed herself, and lifted up her face. The lips were parted in a smile of ecstasy, the eyes were shining bright as though they saw unearthly loveliness.
What Van saw was this: a square, low-studded, dingy room, poor prints of religious subjects, mean tallow dips for candles, tawdry gilding and hangings, artificial tawdry flowers, a plain, small altar, a few squalid worshippers; presently an aged priest, who said Mass in a cracked and feeble voice.
“What spell is over her?” thought Van, marvelling. “Oh! if I could once take her out of it all, home to wealth and beauty and tenderness, and to our churches. No need to tell her that Catholics have beautiful ones somewhere.”
But on their way back to the farm she did not speak, and he could not venture to break the intense calm in which she was wrapped. Every evening he read or sang and played, or talked his best, in the parlor where the household gathered, but she never again was there alone with him, and in the daytime she was always busy just when he wanted her society most. Often he was conscious that what he said or read or did failed to make any impression at all upon her; often while he tried to interest her he found her gazing toward that eastern window, and knew that she did not heed him. He longed to say: “I cannot see what you find in that dull church to give your eyes and thoughts to,” but he could not say it.
Sometimes when he read, far oftener when he played grand music—often, too, when they watched the sky and sea and listened to the waves, the noble nature woke responsive to his call. But it stung him to the quick to feel his general powerlessness to move her except when he roused his best and highest powers; it stung him to see how little she cared for the comforts and luxuries and prettinesses, for knowledge even and the art, that were part of his daily existence, and which he deemed necessary to him; it stung him to find that the meanest occupation never made her discontented, but glad and bright instead; while what he considered suited to her condition or her needs was as nothing to her, and the yearning which he could not fathom seldom came into her face when at her daily labor, but often when he told himself she ought to be content and glad with him.
She talked very little to him; she never seemed to care whether he came or went, and he—all his thoughts became engrossed in her.
One afternoon, near the close of a sultry day, as the first mutterings of thunder and the first far-off flashes of lightning shone and sounded from the dark depths of low-lying clouds above the sea—when the winds were rising, and the poplars showed their leaves’ white faces, and the white-crested waves broke in ominously upon the shore; when Jane’s sensitive nature was awake and quivering in sympathy with the gathering storm—Jacob Escott came hurrying his cattle home to shelter, bringing with him a letter which the stage-driver had flung down to him as he raced his horses by to town. “For you, Mr. Van,” he said.
Van opened it carelessly, read it carefully, then came straight to where Jane stood, watching with keen delight the seething sea and storm-tossed sky.
“Jane,” he said, “listen to me. They have sent for me to go home at once. My father is very ill. Jane, I love you. Will you be my wife?”
She turned with great displeasure in her eyes. “You jest, sir,” she said. “Such jesting pains me much. Even my uncle understands that now.”