Stella Fregelius Part 18

CHAPTER XI

A MORNING SERVICE

Mr. Fregelius replied he was as well as could be expected; that the doctor said no complications were likely to ensue, but that here upon this very bed he must lie for at least two months. "That," he added, "is a sad thing to have to say to a man into whose house you have drifted like a log into a pool of the rocks."

"It is not my house, but my father's, who is at present in France,"

answered Morris. "But I can only say on his behalf that both you and your daughter are most welcome until you are well enough to move to the Rectory."

"Why should I not go there at once?" interrupted Stella. "I could come each day and see my father."

"No, no, certainly not," said Morris. "How could you live alone in that great, empty house?"

"I am not afraid of being alone," she answered, smiling; "but let it be as you like, Mr. Monk--at any rate, until you grow tired of us, and change your mind."

Then Mr. Fregelius told Morris what he had not yet heard--that when it became known that they had deserted Stella, leaving her to drown in the sinking s.h.i.+p, the attentions of the inhabitants of Monksland to the cowardly foreign sailors became so marked that their consul at Northwold had thought it wise to get them out of the place as quickly as possible.

While this story was in progress Stella left the room to speak to the nurse who had been engaged to look after her father at night.

Afterwards, at the request of Mr. Fregelius, Morris told the tale of his daughter's rescue. In the course of it he mentioned how he found her standing on the deck of the sinking s.h.i.+p and singing a Norse song, which she had informed him was an ancient death-dirge.

The old clergyman turned his head and sighed.

"What is the matter?" asked Morris.

"Nothing, Mr. Monk; only that song is unlucky in my family, and I hoped that she had forgotten it."

Morris looked at him blankly.

"You don't understand--how should you? But, Mr. Monk, there are strange things and strange people in this world, and I think that my daughter Stella is one of the strangest of them. Fey like the rest--only a fey Norse woman would sing in such a moment."

Again Morris looked at him.

"Oh, it is an old northern term, and means foreseeing, and foredoomed.

To my knowledge her grandmother, her mother, and her sister, all three of them, sang or repeated that song when in some imminent danger to their lives, and all three of them were dead within the year. The coincidence is unpleasant."

"Surely," said Morris, with a smile, "you who are a clergyman, can scarcely believe in such superst.i.tion?"

"No, I am not superst.i.tious, and I don't believe in it; but the thing recalls unhappy memories. They have been death-lovers, all of them. I never heard of a case of one of that family who showed the slightest fear at the approach of death; and some have greeted it with eagerness."

"Well," said Morris, "would not that mean only that their spiritual sight is a little clearer than ours, and their faith a little stronger?

Theoretically, we should all of us wish to die."

"Quite so, yet we are human, and don't. But she is safe, thanks to you, who but for you would now be gone. My head is still weak from that blow--you must pay no attention to me. I think that I hear Stella coming; you will say nothing to her--about that song, I mean--will you?

We never talk of it in my family."

When, still stiff and sore from his adventure in the open boat, Morris went to bed, it was clear to his mind after careful consideration that fortune had made him the host of an exceedingly strange couple. Of Mr. Fregelius he was soon able to form an estimate distinct enough, although, for aught he knew, it might be erroneous. The clergyman struck him as a person of some abilities who had been doomed to much disappointment and suffered from many sorrows. Doubtless his talents had not proved to be of a nature to advance him in the world. Probably, indeed--and here Morris's hazard was correct--he was a scholar and a bookworm without individuality, to whom fate had a.s.signed minor positions in a profession, which, however sincere his faith, he was scarcely fitted to adorn.

The work of a clergyman in a country parish if it is to succeed, should be essentially practical, and this man was not practical. Clearly, thought Morris, he was one of those who beat their wings against the bars with the common result; it was the wings that suffered, the bars only grew a trifle brighter. Then it seemed that he had lost a wife to whom he was attached, and the child who remained to him, although he loved her and clung to her, he did not altogether understand. So it came about, perhaps, that he had fallen under the curses of loneliness and continual apprehension; and in this shadow where he was doomed to walk, flourished forebodings and regrets, drawing their strength from his starved nature like fungi from a tree outgrown and fallen in the forest.

Mr. Fregelius, so thought Morris, was timid and reticent, because he dared not discover his heart, that had been so sorely trampled by Fate and Fortune. Yet he had a heart which, if he could find a confessor whom he could trust, he longed to ease in confidence. For the rest, the man's physical frame, not too robust at any time, was shattered, and with it his nerve--sudden s.h.i.+pwreck, painful accident, the fierce alternatives of hope and fear; then at last a delirium of joy at the recovery of one whom he thought dead, had done their work with him; and in this broken state some ancient, secret superst.i.tion became dominant, and, strive as he would to suppress it, even in the presence of a stranger, had burst from his lips in hints of unsubstantial folly.

Such was the father, or such he appeared to Morris, but of the daughter what could be said? Without doubt she was a woman of strange and impressive power. At this very moment her sweet voice, touched with that continual note of pleading, still echoed in his brain. And the dark, quiet eyes that now slept, and now shone large, as her thoughts fled through them, like some mysterious sky at night in which the summer lightning pulses intermittently! Who might forget those eyes that once had seen them? Already he wished to be rid of their haunting and could not. Then her beauty--how unusual it was, yet how rich and satisfying to the eye and sense; in some ways almost Eastern notwithstanding her Norse blood!

Often Morris had read or heard of the bewildering power of women, which for his part hitherto he had been inclined to attribute to shallow and very common causes, such as underlie all animate nature. Yet that of Stella--for undoubtedly she had power--suggested another interpretation to his mind. Or was it, after all, nothing but a variant, one of the Protean shapes of the ancient, life-compelling mystery? And her strange chant, the song of which her father made light, but feared so much; her quick insight into the workings of his own thought; her courage in the face of danger and sharp physical miseries; her charm, her mastery. What was he to make of them? Lastly, why did he think so much about her?

It was not his habit where strangers were concerned. And why had she awakened in his somewhat solitary and secluded mind a sympathy so unusual that it seemed to him that he had known her for years and not for hours?

Pondering these things and the fact that perhaps within the coming weeks he would find out their meaning, Morris went to sleep. When he awoke next morning his mood had changed. Somewhat vaguely he remembered his perturbations of the previous night indeed, but now they only moved him to a smile. Their reasons were so obvious. Such exaggerated estimates and thoughts follow strange adventures--and in all its details this adventure was very strange--as naturally as nightmares follow indigestion.

Presently Thomas came to call him, and brought up his letters, among them one from Mary containing nothing in particular, for, of course, it had been despatched before her telegram, but written in her usual humorous style, which made him laugh aloud.

There was a postscript to the letter screwed into the unoccupied s.p.a.ce between the date line and the "Dearest Morris" at its commencement. It ran:

"How would you like to spend our honeymoon? In a yacht in the Mediterranean? I think that would do. There is nothing like solitude in a wretched little boat to promote mutual understanding. If your devotion could stand the strain of a dishevelled and seasick spouse, our matrimonial future has no terrors for your loving Mary."

As Morris read he ceased to laugh. "Yes," he thought to himself, "'solitude in a wretched little boat' does promote mutual understanding.

I am not certain that it does not promote it too much." Then, with an access of irritation, "Bother the people! I wish I could be rid of them; the whole thing seems likely to become a worry."

Next he took up a letter from his father, which, when perused, did not entertain him in the least. There was nothing about Lady Rawlins in it, of whom he longed to hear, or thought that he did; nothing about that entrancing personality, the bibulous and violent Sir Jonah, now so meek and lamblike, but plenty, whole pages indeed, as to details connected with the estate. Also it contained a goodly sprinkling of sarcasms and grumblings at his, Morris's, bad management of various little matters which the Colonel considered important. Most of all, however, was his parent indignant at his neglect to furnish him with details sufficiently ample of the progress of the new buildings. Lastly, he desired, by return of post, a verbatim report of the quarrel that, as he was informed, had occurred on the school board when a prominent Roman Catholic threatened to throw an inkstand at a dissenting minister who, _coram populo_, called him the son of "a Babylonian woman."

By the time that Morris had finished this epistle, and two others which accompanied it, he was in no mood for further reflections of an unpractical or dreamy nature. Who can wonder when it is stated that they contained, respectively, a summary demand for the amount of a considerable bill which he imagined he had paid, and a request that he would read a paper before a "Science Inst.i.tute" upon the possibilities of aerial telephones, made by a very unpleasing lady whom he had once met at a lawn-tennis party? Indeed it would not be too much to say that if anyone had given him the opportunity he would have welcomed a chance to quarrel, especially with the lady of the local Inst.i.tute. Thus, cured of all moral distempers, and every tendency to speculate on feminine charms, hidden or overt, did he descend to the Sabbath breakfast.

That morning Morris accompanied Stella to church, where the services were still being performed by a stop-gap left by Mr. Tomley. Here, again, Stella was a surprise to him, for now her demeanour, and at a little distance her appearance also, were just such as mark ninety-eight out of every hundred clergyman's daughters in the country. So quiet and reserved was she that anyone meeting her that morning might have imagined that she was hurrying from the accustomed Bible-cla.s.s to sit among her pupils in the church. This impression indeed was, as it were, certificated by an old-fas.h.i.+oned silk fichu that she had been obliged to borrow, which in bygone years had been worn by Morris's mother.

Once in church, however, matters changed. To begin with, finding it warm, Stella threw off the fichu, greatly to the gain of her personal appearance. Next, it became evident that the beauties of the ancient building appealed to her, which was not wonderful; for these old, seaside, eastern counties churches, relics of long past wealth and piety, are some of them among the most beautiful in the world. Then came the "Venite," of which here and there she sang a line or so, just one or two rich notes like those that a thrush utters before he bursts into full song. Rare as they might be, however, they caused those about her in the church to look at the strange singer wonderingly.

After this, in the absence of his father, Morris read the lessons, and although, being blessed with a good voice, this was a duty which he performed creditably enough, that day he went through it with a certain sense of nervousness. Why he was nervous at first he did not guess; till, chancing to glance up, he became aware that Miss Fregelius was looking at him out of her half-closed eyes. What is more, she was listening critically, and with much intenseness, whereupon, instantly, he made a mistake and put a false accent on a name.

In due course, the lessons done with, they reached the first hymn, which was one that scarcely seemed to please his companion; at any rate, she shut the book and would not sing. In the case of the second hymn, however, matters were different. This time she did not even open the book. It was evident that she knew the words, perhaps among the most beautiful in the whole collection, by heart. The reader will probably be acquainted with them. They begin:

"And now, O Father, mindful of the love That bought us, once for all, on Calvary's tree."

At first Stella sang quite low, as though she wished to repress her powers. Now, as it happened, at Monksland the choir was feeble, but inoffensive; whereas the organ was a good, if a worn and neglected instrument, suited to the great but spa.r.s.ely peopled church, and the organist, a man who had music in his soul. Low as she was singing, he caught the sound of Stella's voice, and knew at once that before him was a woman who in a supreme degree possessed the divinest gift, perhaps, with which Nature can crown her s.e.x, the power and gift of song.

Forgetting his wretched choir, he began to play to her. She seemed to note the invitation, and at once answered to it.

"Look, Father, look on His anointed face,"

swelled from her throat in deep contralto notes, rich as those the organ echoed.

But the full glory of the thing, that surpa.s.sing music which set Monksland talking for a week, was not reached till she came to the third verse. Perhaps the pure pa.s.sion and abounding humanity of its spirit moved her. Perhaps by this time she was the thrall of her own song.

Perhaps she had caught the look of wonder and admiration on the face of Morris, and was determined to show him that she had other music at command besides that of pagan death-chants. At least, she sang up and out, till her notes dominated those of the choir, which seemed to be but an accompaniment to them; till they beat against the ancient roof and down the depth of the long nave, to be echoed back as though from the golden trumpets of the angels that stood above the tower screen; till even the village children ceased from whispers and playing to listen open-mouthed.

"And then for those, our dearest and best, By this prevailing Presence we appeal; O! fold them closer to Thy mercy's breast, O! do Thine utmost, for their souls' true weal; From tainting mischief keep them white and clear, And crown Thy gifts with strength to persevere."

It was as her voice lingered upon the deep tones of these last words that suddenly Stella seemed to become aware that practically she was singing a solo; that at any rate no one else in the congregation was contributing a note. Then she was vexed, or perhaps a panic took her; at least, not another word of that hymn pa.s.sed her lips. In vain the organist paused and looked round indignantly; the little boys, the clerk, and the stout coach-builder were left to finish it by themselves, with results that by contrast were painful.

When Stella came out of church, redraped in the antique and unbecoming fichu, she found herself the object of considerable attention. Indeed, upon one pretext and another nearly all the congregation seemed to be lingering about the porch and pathway to stare at the new parson's s.h.i.+pwrecked daughter when she appeared. Among them was Miss Layard, and with her the delicate brother. They were staying to lunch with the Stop-gap's meek little wife. Indeed, this self-satisfied and somewhat acrimonious lady, Miss Layard, engaged Morris in conversation, and pointedly asked him to introduce her to Miss Fregelius.

"We are to be neighbours, you know," she explained, "for we live at the Hall in the next parish, not more than a mile away."