This would have been pleasantry if the airs most frequently selected had been cheerful or soothing, and if the favorite hymns had been of a sort to inspire a love for what was lovely in this life, and to give some faint foretaste of the harmonies of a better world to come.
But there is a fondness for minor keys and wailing cadences common to the monotonous chants of cannibals and savages generally, to such war-songs as the wild, implacable "Marseillaise," and to the favorite tunes of low--spirited Christian pessimists. That mournful "China,"which one of our most agreeable story-tellers has justly singled out as the cry of despair itself, was often sung at The Poplars, sending such a sense of utter misery through the house, that poor Kitty Fagan would cross herself, and wring her hands, and think of funerals, and wonder who was going to die,--for she fancied she heard the Banshee's warning in those most dismal ululations.
On the first Saturday of June, a fortnight before her disappearance, Myrtle strolled off by the river shore, along its lonely banks, and came dome with her hands full of leaves and blossoms. Silence Withers looked at them as if they were a kind of melancholy manifestation of frivolity on the part of the wicked old earth. Not that she did not inhale their faint fragrance with a certain pleasure, and feel their beauty as none whose souls are not wholly shriveled and hardened can help doing, but the world was, in her estimate, a vale of tears, and it was only by a momentary forgetfulness that she could be moved to smile at anything.
Miss Cynthia, a sharper-edged woman, had formed the habit of crushing everything for its moral, until it lost its sweetness and grew almost odious, as flower-de-luces do when handled roughly. "There's a worm in that leaf, Myrtle. He has rolled it all round him, and hidden himself from sight; but there is a horrid worm in it, for all it is so young and fresh. There is a worm in every young soul, Myrtle.""But there is not a worm in every leaf, Miss Cynthia. Look," she said," all these are open, and you can see all over and under them, and there is nothing there. Are there never any worms in the leaves after they get old and yellow, Miss Cynthia?"That was a pretty fair hit for a simple creature of fifteen, but perhaps she was not so absolutely simple as one might have thought.
It was on the evening of this same day that they were sitting together. The sweet season was opening, and it seemed as if the whispering of the leaves, the voices of the birds, the softness of the air, the young life stirring in everything, called on all creatures to join the universal chorus of praise that was going up around them.
"What shall we sing this evening?" said Miss Silence.
"Give me one of the books, if you please, Cousin Silence," said Miss Cynthia." It is Saturday evening. Holy time has begun. Let us prepare our minds for the solemnities of the Sabbath."She took the book, one well known to the schools and churches of this nineteenth century.
"Book Second. Hymn 44. Long metre. I guess 'Putney' will be as good a tune as any to sing it to."The trio began,--"With holy fear, and humble song," and got through the first verse together pretty well. Then came the second verse:
"Far in the deep where darkness dwells, The land of horror and despair, Justice has built a dismal hell, And laid her stores of vengeance there."Myrtle's voice trembled a little in singing this verse, and she hardly kept up her part with proper spirit.
"Sing out, Myrtle," said Miss Cynthia, and she struck up the third verse:
"Eternal plagues and heavy chains, Tormenting racks and fiery coals, And darts t' inflict immortal pains, Dyed in the blood of damned souls."This last verse was a duet, and not a trio. Myrtle closed her lips while it was singing, and when it was done threw down the book with a look of anger and disgust. The hunted soul was at bay.
"I won't sing such words," she said, "and I won't stay here to hear them sung. The boys in the streets say just such words as that, and I am not going to sing them. You can't scare me into being good with your cruel hymn-book!"She could not swear: she was not a boy. She would not cry: she felt proud, obdurate, scornful, outraged. All these images, borrowed from the holy Inquisition, were meant to frighten her--and had simply irritated her. The blow of a weapon that glances off, stinging, but not penetrating, only enrages. It was a moment of fearful danger to her character, to her life itself.
Without heeding the cries of the two women, she sprang up-stairs to her hanging chamber. She threw open the window and looked down into the stream. For one moment her head swam with the sudden, overwhelming, almost maddening thought that came over her,--the impulse to fling herself headlong into those running waters and dare the worst these dreadful women had threatened her with. Something she often thought afterwards it was an invisible hand held her back during that brief moment, and the paroxysm--just such a paroxysm as throws many a young girl into the Thames or the Seine--passed away.
She remained looking, in a misty dream, into the water far below.
Its murmur recalled the whisper of the ocean waves. And through the depths it seemed as if she saw into that strange, half--remembered world of palm-trees and white robes and dusky faces, and amidst them, looking upon her with ineffable love and tenderness, until all else faded from her sight, the face of a fair woman,--was it hers, so long, long dead, or that dear young mother's who was to her less a recollection than a dream?
