“Perhaps if one were to make some one happy with them or to put them in a bride’s bouquet they would no longer be scentless,” Pelleas quaintly said.
But now my mind was busy with other problems than those of such fragrance.
“Where do you go to church, my dear?” I asked, not daring to glance at Pelleas.
“To the mission,” she said, “over—” and she named one of the poorest of the struggling East Side chapels. “It’s just started,” she explained, “an’ the lady that give most, she died, and the money don’t come. And poor Mr. Lovelow, he’s the minister and he’s sick—but he preaches, anyhow. And pretty near nobody comes to hear him,” she added, with a curious, half-defiant emotion, her cheeks still glowing. It was strange that I who am such a busybody of romance was so slow to comprehend that betraying colour.
Pelleas and I knew where the mission was. We had even peeped into it one Sunday when, though it was not quite finished, they were trying to hold service from the unpainted pulpit. I remembered the ugly walls covered with the lead-pencil calculations of the builders, the forlorn reed organ, the pushing feet upon the floor. And now “the lady who give most” had died.
“Last Easter,” our little friend was reiterating, “we had one geranium that the minister brought. But now his mother is dead and I guess he won’t be keeping plants. Men always lets ’em freeze. Mis’ Sledge, she’s got a cactus, but it hasn’t bloomed yet. Maybe she’ll take that. And they said they was going to hang up the letters left from last Christmas, for the green. They don’t say nothing but ‘Welcome’ and ‘Star of Bethlehem,’ but I s’pose the ‘Welcome’ is always nice for a church, and I s’pose the star shines all year round, if you look. But they don’t much of anybody come. Mr. Lovelow, he’s too sick to visit round much. Last Sunday they was only ’leven in the whole room.”
“Only ’leven in the whole room.” It hardly seemed credible in New York. But I knew the poverty of some of the smaller missions, especially in a case where “the lady that give most” has died. And this poor young minister, this young Mr. Lovelow whose mother had died and who was too sick to “visit round much,” and doubtless had an indifferent, poverty-ridden parish which no other pastor wanted—I knew in an instant the whole story of the struggle. I looked over at our pots of Ascension lilies and I found myself unreasonably angry with the dear Cleatams and Chartres and Hobart Eddy and the rest for the self-indulgence of having given them to us.
At that moment my eyes met those of Pelleas. He was leaning forward, looking at me with an expression of both daring, and doubt of my approval, and I saw his eyes go swiftly to the lilies. What was he contriving, I wondered, my heart beating. He was surely not thinking of sending our lilies over to the mission, for we could never get them all there in time and Nichola—
“Etarre!” said Pelleas—and showed me in a moment heights of resourcefulness to which I can never attain—“Etarre! It is only half after ten. We can’t go out to service—and the mission is not four blocks from us. Why not have our little friend run over there and, if there are only two dozen or so in the chapel, have that young Mr. Lovelow bring them all over here, and let it be Easter in this room?”
He waved his hand toward the lilies waiting there all about the walls and doing no good to any save a selfish old man and woman. He looked at me, almost abashed at his own impulse. Was ever such a practical Mahomet, proposing to bring to himself some Mountain Delectable?