The loves of Pelleas and Etarre

by Zona Gale

“Lord, thou hast made thy face to shine upon us—” he prayed, and it seemed to me that our shabby drawing-room was suddenly quick with a presence more intimate than that of the lilies.

When the hymn was given out and there was a fluttering of leaves of the hymn-books they had brought, five of our guests at a nod from Mr. Lovelow made their way forward. One was a young woman with a ruddy face, but ruddy with that strange, wrinkled ruddiness of age rather than youth, who wore a huge felt hat laden with flaming roses evidently added expressly for Easter day. She had on a thin waist of flimsy pink with a collar of beads and silver braid, and there were stones of all colours in a half-dozen rings on her hands. She took her place at the piano with an ease almost defiant and she played the hymn not badly, I must admit, and sang in a full riotous soprano. Meanwhile, at her side was ranged the choir. There were four—a great watch-dog of a bass with swelling veins upon his forehead and erect reddish hair; a little round contralto in a plush cap and a dress trimmed with the appliquéd flowers cut from a lace curtain; a tall, shy soprano who looked from one to another through the hymn as if she were in personal exhortation; and a pleasant-faced tenor who sang with a will that was good to hear and was evidently the choir leader, for he beat time with a stumpy, cracked hand set with a huge black ring on its middle finger. The little woman next me offered her book and I had a glimpse of a pinched side-face, with a displaced strand of gray hair and a loose linen collar with no cravat, but I have seldom heard a sweeter voice than that which up-trembled beside me—although, poor little woman! she was sadly ill at ease because the thumb which rested on the book next me was thrust in a glove fully an inch too long. As for Pelleas, he was sharing a book with a youngish man, stooped, long-armed, with a mane of black hair, whom Mr. Lovelow afterward told me had lost his position in a sweat-shop through drawing some excellent cartoons on the box of his machine. Mr. Lovelow himself was “looking over” with a mother and daughter who were later presented to us, and who embarrassed any listener by persistently talking in concert, each repeating a few words of what the other had just said, quite in the fashion of the most gently bred talkers bent upon assuring each other of their spontaneous sympathy and response.

And what a hymn it was! After the first stanza they gained in confidence, and a volume of sound filled the low room—ay, and a world of spirit, too. “Christ the Lord is risen to-day, Hallelu—jah! ...” they caroled, and Pelleas, who never can sing a tune aloud although he declares indignantly that in his head he keeps it perfectly, and I, who do not sing at all, both joined perforce in the triumphant chorus. Ah, I dare say that farther down the avenue were sweet-voiced choirs that sang music long rehearsed, golden, flowing, and yet I think there was no more fervent Easter music than that in which we joined. It was as if the other music were the censer-smoke, and we were its shadow on the ground, but a proof of the sun for all that.

I cannot now remember all that simple service, perhaps because I so well remember the glory of the hour. I sat where I could see the park stretching away, black upon silver and silver upon black, over the Ascension lilies. The face of the young minister was illumined as he read and talked to his people. I think that I have never known such gentleness, never such yearning and tenderness as were his with that handful of crude and careless and devout. And though he spoke passionately and convincingly I could not but think that he was like some dumb thing striving for the utterance of the secret fire within—striving to “burn aloud,” as a violin beseeches understanding. Perhaps there is no other way to tell the story of that first day of the week—“early, when it was yet dark.”

“They had brought sweet spices,” he said, “with which to anoint Him. Where are the spices that we have brought to-day? Have we aught of sacrifice, of charity, of zeal, of adoration—let us lay them at His feet, an offering acceptable unto the Lord, a token of our presence at the door of the sepulcher from which the stone was rolled away. Where are the sweet spices of our hands, where the pound of ointment of spikenard wherewith we shall anoint the feet of our living Lord? For if we bring of our spiritual possession, the Christ will suffer us, even as He suffered Mary; and the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment.”

“And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,” I said over to myself. Is it not strange how a phrase, a vista, a bar of song, a thought beneath the open stars, will almost pierce the veil?

“And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,” I said silently all through the last prayer and the last hymn and the benediction of “The Lord make his face to shine upon you, the Lord give you peace.” And some way, with our rising, the abashment which is an integral part of all such gatherings as we had convoked was not to be reckoned with, and straightway the presentations and the words of gratitude and even the pretty anxiety of Little Friend fluttering among us were spontaneous and unconstrained. It was quite as if, Pelleas said afterward, we had been reduced to a common denominator. Indeed, it seems to me in remembering the day as if half the principles of Christian sociology were illustrated there in our shabby drawing-room; but for that matter I would like to ask what complexities of political science, what profound bases of solidarité, are not on the way to be solved in the presence of Easter lilies? I am in all these matters most stupid and simple, but at all events I am not blameful enough to believe that they are exhausted by the theories.

Every one lingered for a little, in proof of the success of our venture. Pelleas and I talked with the choir and with the pianiste, and this lady informed us that our old rosewood piano, which we apologetically explained to have been ours for fifty years, was every bit as good and every bit as loud as a new golden-oak “instrument” belonging to her sister. The tall, shy soprano told us haltingly how much she had enjoyed the hour and her words conveyed sincerity in spite of her strange system of overemphasis of everything she said, and of carrying down the corners of her mouth as if in deprecation. The plump little contralto thanked us, too, with a most winning smile—such round open eyes she had, immovably fixed on the object of her attention, and as Pelleas said such evident eyes.

“Her eyes looked so amazingly like eyes,” he afterward commented whimsically.

We talked too with the little woman of the long-thumbed gloves who had the extraordinary habit of smiling faintly and turning away her head whenever she detected any one looking at her. And the sweat-shop cartoonist proved to be an engaging young giant with the figure of a Greek god, classic features, a manner of gravity amounting almost to hauteur, and as pronounced an East Side dialect as I have ever heard.