“Music seems to mean so much to me!” Lily often said, and she was a trifle complacent at not being able to listen without tears to “Ten thousand times ten thousand,” that had been sung at Mamma’s funeral. “It’s funny, music always makes me feel like praying.” But everything made Lily feel like praying. Her bedtime prayers were so long and elaborate that, over and over again, she fell asleep in the midst of them, waking up later cold and stiff and drenched with moonlight. She had become very High Church, and while she hadn’t quite the courage to call Mr. Nelson “Father Nelson,” especially as he had a large family, her genuflections, and crossings, and flopping down on her knees in the middle of the Nicene Creed, provided much material for conversation at the Sunday dinner tables of the rest of the congregation. “Regular Roman Catholic!” was the general opinion. It was a dreadful nuisance having to have an egg or sardines for her on Fridays, and Maggie was always forgetting. Once they had had chicken salad for Friday supper, and Lily hadn’t been able to keep from crying.
She thought of Lord Jesus so much, Gentle Jesus, who had loved her—and all mankind, of course—so much that he had died for her; and thinking of him her blue eyes swam with tears, her whole body seemed to melt into tears, tender and warm as spring rain.
“We must try to please our dear Lord Jesus Christ, children, mustn’t we?” she would say to her Sunday school class, and the little boys would look back at her solemnly from above ruffled collars and butterfly bows, the little girls from under hats like saucers holding cones of ice-cream, and agree politely; “Yes, Miss Lily.”
She did try so hard to please him, and live the spiritual life. Arranging the bouquets in Grandmother’s brass altar vases, she couldn’t help feeling sometimes, when there were strangers who had come early, that they might be whispering, as she made the flowers spray out or knelt before the altar, touched by the sunlight falling through the amber glass, “What a spiritual face! Who is she?”
Her Sunday school class! Her altar flowers! She was bursting with enthusiasm at first; and, when they got to be dreadful bores, she wouldn’t admit it even to herself. For if they were gone what would be left?
For a little while she thought Mr. Marshall would be left. She met him at Hessie Farley’s Valentine euchre party, in a romantic setting of red cardboard hearts, heart-shaped sandwiches, heart-shaped cakes with beetroot-reddened icing, and large crimson hearts of geranium blossoms. Mrs. Farley talked for a year about how much trouble it had all been. He was a rather wooden gentleman, but Lily garlanded him with the vine leaves of her imagination, and at parting he humorously offered her his scorecard heart, and asked if he might call some Saturday evening.
“Most evenings my rule is early to bed—‘early to bed, early to rise,’ you know! But on Sundays I sleep an hour later in the morning, so I sit up an hour later on Saturday nights,” he explained.
So Lily, all in a flutter, took to running across the road to see old Mrs. Clark on Saturday evenings, hoping that Mr. Marshall would come to call.
“Good evening, Miss Campion. Is Miss Lily in?”
“Good evening, Mr. Marshall. Excuse me a moment and I’ll call my sister—she’s just across the road. She goes so often to see a poor old neighbor.”
And Mr. Marshall would think reverently, “Sweet Saint Charity!”
She tried to open doors into a world of wonders for Mrs. Clark.
“You know in India there’s a wonderful building called the Taj Mahal, all carved out of marble so that it looks as fine as lace, that an Indian rajah built in memory of his wife.”
“Patience guide me! Squaws they call them, don’t they? My nephew Will’s wife sent me a picture last week from the World’s Fair, and it said on it ‘Chief Big Crow and his squaw Little Cloud.’ ”
“But this is a different kind of Indian, Mrs. Clark—Indians that live in India, way across the ocean, and ride around on elephants—”
“Well, different kind or not, I wouldn’t trust ’em. Scalp you as soon as look at you, I’ve always heard tell.”
And all the time Lily was listening for the click of the gate, steps on the path, Maggie’s breathless voice saying, “Lily! Mr. Marshall’s over at the house!” But he never came, and it just let her in for a tiresome custom, for what could she do when Mrs. Clark greeted her with, “I was just settin’ here in the dark feelin’ so lonesome, and hopin’ my uttermost best that you’d come!”
Every Saturday night Lily carried a bunch of flowers to Mrs. Clark, so that Mr. Clark’s grave, conveniently next to the Methodist Church, might be admired on Sunday. Suppose, just suppose, that Mr. Marshall arrived some evening as she came down the drive under the shadowy pines, her arms full of feathered tulips—or coppery snapdragon and creamy roses, as time went on—or asters—chrysanthemums—tulips—
“Where are you taking your armful of flowers?”
“I’m just running across the road—I take them every week to a poor old neighbor, to put on her husband’s grave.”
And he would say, a note of reverence stealing into his voice:
“Sweet Saint Charity!”
Mrs. Clark looked critically at each Saturday’s offering. She had a reputation to keep up.
“Thank you kindly. Them white roses last week was as beautiful as if they’d been artificial—I suppose they’re all gone? Everybody always admires poor Lewis’s grave, it has the handsomest bouquets of any in the graveyard.”
“The old show-off!” Maggie exclaimed crossly, picking her prettiest roses for the Saturday bouquet.
Everybody came to The Maples for flowers, Maggie complained; but she was proud, too. Taking care of the garden used up all the time she had left from cooking and the house. Just picking the sweetpeas took hours, although all three of them picked. It was such hot work,
