A Little Country Girl Part 8

Ask Mrs. Freddy Allen; she is young, and likes to go everywhere, and Freddy will go along and make another gentleman."

"That will do nicely if you really don't want to go, mamma. We'll invite them all as we come out of church, and save the bother of writing notes.

It's easier to explain when you see people than to write down everything."

"Yes, that's one of the conveniences of going to church," remarked Mrs.

Joy, calmly. "I've often had as many as three or four invitations, coming out of Trinity on a Sunday morning in the season. These m.u.f.fins are horrid. James, tell the cook she ought to be ashamed of herself to send up such things. They're as tough as leather, and burned besides--as black as my shoe, I do declare."

"Yes, 'm."

And James departed to incense the cook with the unsoftened message. The cook declared that when ladies came down an hour late for breakfast, they must expect tough m.u.f.fins; and for her part she didn't care whether they were good or not; she didn't think much of the place anyway, and didn't mean to stay on. There'd be plenty of people coming in a week or two, and plenty of places to pick and choose from. Mrs. Joy was always having little difficulties with her servants.

Trinity Church looked cool and shady, as the party entered it from the dazzle of the outer suns.h.i.+ne. Berenice Joy was perfectly well-trained in the outward forms of devotion. She called herself "High Church;" and nothing could be more graceful than the manner in which she glided up the aisle, bowed to the chancel, and sank on her knees, for what was supposed to be a short interval of silent prayer. But her eyes went straight to the Grays' pew the moment she rose, and from thence to the Halletts', and she whispered to Ethel, "They're all here. That's nice."

Then she indulged in a long stare at Candace, who had come to church with her cousins, and who, in her new cream-and-brown foulard, with the daisy-trimmed hat, and a pair of the birthday gloves on her slender hands, looked quite differently from the ill-dressed little pa.s.senger of the "Eolus" the Monday before.

"Do look! That's the very girl we saw on the boat," went on Berenice, in the same low whisper. "Did you ever! Hasn't Mrs. Gray done her over nicely? I wonder where she got that hat?"

"I wonder what she has done with the old one?"

"Given it to the cook, or sold it to the rag-and-bottle man," retorted Berry. Then came a suppressed giggle, which ended in sudden, forced gravity as the opening words of the service fell on their ears, and they rose with the rest of the congregation.

Candace was not conscious that she was being looked at. She had only once or twice in her life been in an Episcopal church, and never before in an old one. Trinity seemed to her as wonderful and picturesque as some of the churches she had read about in books. She looked at the square pews where people sat sideways, instead of fronting the chancel as in ordinary churches. She noted the tall wands with gilded tops, which marked the places of the junior and senior wardens; the quaint, swinging chandeliers of old bra.s.s; the tablets on the walls, two or three bearing inscriptions in honor of dead rectors or other departed worthies, one to the memory of a young girl, with a beautiful flying figure in bas-relief, carved in white marble. She gazed with amazement at the pulpit,--one of the ancient "three-decker" pattern, which is rarely seen now-a-days, with a clerk's desk below, a reading-desk above, above that a lofty pulpit for the clergyman, to which a narrow flight of stairs gave access, and suspended over all an enormous extinguisher-shaped sounding-board. It looked large and heavy enough to crush any clergyman who should be caught by its fall while in act of preaching; and Candace watched its slight oscillations with an apprehensive fascination, till she recollected that it must have hung there for a hundred years at least, so there was no reason to suppose that it would drop on this particular Sunday.

By turning her head a very little she could get a glimpse of the organ-loft, with its quaint little organ bearing two gilded mitres and a royal crown on top, and below, the inscription, "The Gift of George Berkeley, late Lord Bishop of Cloyne." She wondered who George Berkeley could have been, and resolved to ask Cousin Kate as they went home if there was any story about him.

There was no whispering or giggling in Mrs. Gray's pew. The girls were too well trained for such irreverence; and except that Georgie interchanged one little smile with Berry Joy as she came in, not one of them looked away from the clergyman till the sermon was over and the benediction p.r.o.nounced. It had been an impressive service to Candace, who was used to the barer forms of the Congregational church; and she was surprised to perceive how little solemnizing effect it seemed to have on the congregation in general.

The moment people rose from their knees, a low buzz of conversation began. Berry Joy seized on Georgie and Gertrude, and began to unfold the sailing plan as they walked down the aisle. Mrs. Joy took possession of Cousin Kate. Everybody seemed to have something to say to somebody.

Candace caught sc.r.a.ps of half-a-dozen different conversations before she reached the door, and not one of them related in any way to the sermon or to anything religious. She overheard one invitation to dinner, another to drive, an inquiry about a dressmaker, a bit of gossip about a new engagement, a request for a recipe for mayonnaise. She supposed it must be the right thing to chatter thus, since all these delightful-looking people did it; still it seemed to her country notions rather queer.

The carriage was waiting in Spring Street, a little farther up the hill.

She did not like to get in till the others were ready, so she stepped aside among the gravestones, and looked up to where the white, slender spire of the old church towered against the blue. She was trying to make out the Episcopal mitre surmounted by the gilded weather-vane, when Mrs.

Gray saw and beckoned to her.

She was still talking with Mrs. Joy, and that lady was saying, "I may possibly not be able to go myself, but if I am prevented I will see that the young folks have a proper matron. And then, my dear, there's Captain Davis, you know. I never let Berry sail with any one else. He's so safe and so careful, and the weather promises to be perfect."

"It certainly is perfect to-day," said Mrs. Gray. "Candace dear, I want to introduce you to Mrs. Joy. My cousin, Miss Arden, Mrs. Joy; or rather my niece, for her mother was like my own sister. She has come to spend the summer with me. Cannie, Mrs. Joy is the mother of the young lady who came down with you in the 'Eolus.'"

"Ah, indeed, the girls did not tell me about that," said Mrs. Joy.

"Well, my dear,"--Mrs. Joy would have said "my dear" to Queen Victoria or the Empress of China, if she had ever had the chance of an interview with those potentates,--"you've come to a charming place and to charming relatives, I'm sure, and you can't fail to enjoy your summer. You must come with your cousins to-morrow to this sailing-party which my young folks are getting up. They'll be delighted, I'm sure."

"Thank you," said Candace, timidly, glancing at Mrs. Gray.

"That will be very nice," said her cousin. "Cannie has not been on the water yet. It is a new pleasure for her. At four o'clock, you said, Mrs.

Joy?"

"Yes, dear, at four. And don't trouble to send down for the girls. It's impossible to tell exactly when they will get in, as it depends on the wind, and Berry will have the beach-wagon, and can bring them all up as well as not. Good-by, dear." And Mrs. Joy sailed toward her carriage, where the two girls were already seated.

"I've asked that Miss Arden who's staying with the Grays to go out sailing with you to-morrow," she said, as she took her seat. "You'll want another gentleman, Berry."

"Oh, mamma, what _did_ you do that for? She's the pokiest little thing.

We didn't want her at all."

"Well, Mrs. Gray introduced her, and said she was almost her niece, and I thought it seemed to be expected. Mrs. Gray is always polite to our visitors, you know, and I don't like to seem to slight any of hers.

What's the matter with the girl?"

"Oh, nothing's the matter, only she's poky, and doesn't seem to fit in somehow. You would understand if you had seen her the day she came. Mrs.

Gray has dressed her up, as you might be sure she would; but then she looked like the backwoods, didn't she, Ethel?"

"She seemed nice-appearing enough to-day. You'll have to make the best you can of it, I guess; for Mrs. Gray accepted for her."

"It doesn't really signify," said Berry, discontentedly; "only it throws the party all out of shape. And she's younger than any of the rest, only just seventeen, Georgie says. She'd a great deal better stay at home with Marian."

It was fortunate that Candace did not guess how unwelcome her company was to the getters-up of the party, for the idea of the sail was most delightful to her. She had never been out in a boat in her life, not even on the smallest pond; and she had just discovered the strong fascination of the sea. She longed to get nearer to it, to know it better; and in her innocent little heart she thought, "How very kind it was in Mrs. Joy to invite me."

Sunday was always a particularly pleasant day at the Grays'. Mrs. Gray was wont to declare that though she did not believe in the Jewish Sabbath, she did with all her heart believe in the Christian day of rest; and she took pains to make it a happy one for all under her roof.

She gave her servants as much liberty as she could, simplified their work, and provided a plenty of good reading for such of them as stayed at home. Her own time was much more at the service of her family than it could be on ordinary days. She always took a walk with the girls in the cool of the afternoon, if the day were pleasant, and kept some book of a thoughtful kind to read aloud in the evenings. This Sunday it happened to be that wonderful little prose poem of Mrs. Oliphant's, "A Beleaguered City." Cannie found it absorbingly interesting, and even Mr.

Gray laid aside his newspaper and listened to the very end.

The reading done, Candace found a chance to ask her question about George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, the donor of the organ. There was a story about him, as it turned out, and a very interesting one. Mrs. Gray told how, when Dean of Derry in Ireland, the project of establis.h.i.+ng a college in Bermuda for the education of English boys and of Indian youths to act as missionaries to their own people, had taken possession of his mind; and he had given up his preferment, and crossed the sea with his family to engage in this chosen work. She described their landing in Newport on a Sunday morning when everybody was at church, and how the clergyman stopped in the middle of his sermon, and with all his congregation following him, hurried down to the water-side to receive the distinguished guest. She promised to take Candace out some day to see Whitehall,--the house which he built on the island, and in which he lived for some years, till the impossibility of carrying out his scheme for Bermuda drove him back again to Ireland; and also the rocky shelf still called "Bishop Berkeley's Rock," where he is said to have composed the lines which begin

"Westward the course of empire takes its way."

Then she looked up a photograph from Smibert's picture of Dean Berkeley and his family to show them, and by that time the girls had all grown interested; and when Marian said that she, too, wanted to go to see Whitehall, Georgie and Gertrude begged to be included also, and Mrs.

Gray promised to take them all.

"One of the Dean's little children is buried in Trinity churchyard, Cannie," she ended; "you can look up the stone some day. It has 'Lucia Berkeley' carved upon it."

"I should like to," said Cannie. "It has been so nice to hear about him.

How many interesting things have happened in Newport! I shall care a great deal more about that funny little organ, next Sunday."

Newport Harbor shone all blue and silver in the sun, as the party stepped on board the cat-boat "Cornelia" at sharp four on Monday afternoon. Mrs. Fred Allen, a tall, graceful brunette, seemed as much of a girl as any of the party which she was nominally to "matronize;" but "she _was_ married though she didn't look it," as Berry Joy remarked, and so was qualified to fill the place. There was a fair wind, which sent the boat smoothly along with little or no motion as they glided past the long sunken shoal off the end of Goat Island, and opened the view of Brenton's Cove, with the wreck of the old slaver lying in the deep shadow under one bank, opposite the ribs of the other stranded bark; while from beyond in the laughing bay, white-winged boats flitted to and fro, and seemed to beckon and make tempting signals to the poor defeated barks who might never sail or enjoy the sea again. Candace ventured to ask Gertrude in a whisper, "What are those?"

"Oh, only some old wrecks," replied Gertrude, carelessly; and she turned from Candace to talk to Tom Joy, who sat next to her.

The "Cornelia" was now running on the favoring wind between Fort Adams and the Conanicut sh.o.r.e. On one hand lay Newport, which looked like a dream city in the soft s.h.i.+ne of the afternoon; on the other was the long hill line of the island, green with gra.s.ses, except where broken now and then by rocky cliffs, and indented with innumerable little coves and inlets,--some ending in strips of pebbly beach, others in stony shelves overhung by sea-weeds. The water was beautiful in color,--here pale flas.h.i.+ng green, there purple in the shadow, with gleams of golden light and a low reach of s.h.i.+mmering blue toward the horizon. On sped the boat till they could almost touch the ledges. The rounded outline of the old fortification on the upper hill towered above their heads. Then suddenly she curved and wheeled off on the other tack, with the sharp line of Castle Hill and the Aga.s.siz Point full in view.

Candace gazed with delighted eyes to left and right. Her mind was full of questions, but there seemed no one of whom she could ask them.

Georgie and Berry were perched on the extreme point of the bow, with a young man stretched at their feet. Mrs. Fred was on the cabin roof amids.h.i.+ps, with quite a little court of girls and young men about her.

The couples who sat opposite and beside her seemed quite absorbed in each other. No one had spoken to Candace since the first introductions, and she was too shy to open a conversation with anybody.

"How I wish I knew!" she sighed to herself, half aloud.

Looking up, she met the shrewd, twinkling eyes of the Captain. Perhaps he had caught the words, for he asked encouragingly, "Did you speak, Miss?"

"No," said Candace, "I don't think I spoke. But I was wondering about that--that--_thing_ up there," pointing to the Fort.

"That? That's Fort Dumpling, as folks call it. It is a kind of a queer old place, ain't it? They don't use it now for no war purposes, but it makes a pretty p'int in the landscape, and folks go there for picnics and such in the summer season."