Van Berg at once determined to go to this drug-store and learn,if possible,if there were anything to confirm the horrible suspicion that crossed his mind.He remembered that despair and desperate deeds often went together,and the daily press had taught him how many people,with warped and ungoverned moral natures,place their troubles beyond remedy by the supreme folly of self-destruction.
By a considerable detour through a side street,he reached the store unperceived,and found the druggist rather disquieted himself.
"Are you staying at Burleigh's?"he asked.
"I am,"Van Berg replied.
"Do you know a young lady boarding there with large dark eyes and auburn hair?""I do."
"Is there--is there anything wrong about her?""Why should there be?Why do you ask?"
"She has just been in here,and she looked sick and strangely,and all she wanted was a large phial of laudanum.Somehow her looks and purchase have made me uneasy.I never saw so white a face in my life,and she seemed weak and very tired.If she's sick,how comes it she's walking to the village?Besides,she seemed to have very little to do with the party she joined after leaving here."Van Berg controlled himself only by a powerful effort,and was very glad that the brim of his soft hat concealed the pallor of his own face.He managed to say quietly:
"The young lady you describe has not been well,and has probably found the walk longer and more wearisome than she supposed.As for the laudanum,that's used in many ways.Some cigars,if you please--thank you.I'll join the lady and see that she reaches home safely,"and he hastily left the store and walked swiftly away.
"He wouldn't go as fast as that if he wasn't a little uneasy,too,"muttered the druggist,whose dearth of business gave him abundant leisure to see all that was going on,and to imagine much more.
Van Berg determined to overtake Ida before she reached the hotel,and his strides were as long and swift as mortal dread could make them.
In the meantime,while the artist was making the detour necessary to reach the drug-store without meeting Ida,she and her companions had started homeward.As they approached a church on the outskirts of the village,the bell in the steeple commenced tolling.
"What's that for?"asked a young man of the party of a plain,farmer-like appearing man,who was just about to enter.
"For prayer-meetin',"was the good-natured reply."It wouldn't hurt you to come to it;"and the speaker passed into the lecture-room.
"I call this frivolous assemblage to order,"cried the youth,turning around to his companions."If any one of our number has ever attended a prayer-meeting,let him hold up his right hand.
I use the masculine pronoun,because the man always embraces the woman--when he gets a chance."No hands were held up.
"Heathen,every mother's son of us,"cried the first speaker.
"The daughters are angels,of course,and don't need to go to prayer-meetin',as he of the cowhide sandals just termed it.But for the novelty of the thing,and for the want of something better to do,I move that we all go to-night.If it should be borous,why,we can come out."The proposition pleased the fancy of the party,and with gay words and laughter that scarcely ceased at the vestibule,they entered the place of prayer and lighted down among the sober-visaged,soberly-dressed worshippers like a flock of tropical birds.
Ida reluctantly followed them.At first she half decided to walk home alone,but feared to do so.She who had resolved on facing the "King of Terrors"shrank,with a woman's instinct,from a lonely walk in the starlight.
She sat in dreary preoccupation a little apart from the others and paid no more heed to the opening services than to their ill-concealed merriment.
the minister was away on his August vacation.Prayer-meetings were out of season,and very few were present.The plain farmer was trying to conduct the service as well as he could,but it was evident he would have been much more at ease holding the handle of a plow or the reins of his rattling team,than a hymn-book.Dr.
Watts and John Wesley might have lost some of their heavenly serenity could they have heard him read their verses,and certainly only a long-suffering and merciful God could listen to his prayer.And yet rarely on the battle-field is there more moral courage displayed than plain Thomas Smith put forth that night in his conscientious effort to perform an unwonted task;and when at last he sat down and said,"Bruthren,the meetin'is now open,"he was more exhausted than he than he would have been from a long day of toil.
"The Lord looketh at the heart"is a truth that chills many with dread,but it was a precious thought to Farmer Smith as he saw that his fellow church members did not look very appreciative,and that the gay young city-people often giggled outright at his uncouth words and manner.
Ida would have been as greatly amused as any of them a few weeks since,but now she scarcely heard the poor man's stumblings,or the wailing of the hymns that were mangled anew by the people.She sat with her eyes fixed on vacancy,thinking how dreary and empty the world had become;and it seemed to her that religion was the most dreary and empty thing in it.
"What good can this wretched little meeting do any one?"she thought,more than once.
She was answered.
Near her was a very old man who had been regarding the ill-behaved party with an expression of mingled displeasure and pity.Now that the meeting was open to all he rose slowly to his feet,steadying himself with his cane.
"He looks like the Ancient Mariner,"giggled an exceedingly immature youth,who sat next to Ida.
She turned upon him sharply and said,in a low tone,"If you have the faintest instincts of a gentleman you will respect that venerable man."The youth was so effectually quenched that he bore the aspect of a turnip-beet during the remainder of the service.