“Oh, no,” said Helen, “it would do me a great deal of good, I hope. I shall improve the children, and, at all events, I shall have duties to perform which will prevent me from feeling my life useless.”
Keefe did not answer; there was a minute’s pause: then he suddenly jumped up, and muttering something about business which he had forgotten, and which must be immediately attended to, he walked out of the orchard. He left Helen surprised at his hasty and abrupt departure, and more anxious and uneasy lest anything she had said had offended him, than she liked to own.
She told herself again and again, that she had neither said nor done anything which ought to have displeased him, and that he had too much good sense to be annoyed with her, without she had given him some reason to be so; but she could not help thinking that he had hastened away to hide some vexation, to whatever it was owing; and just as little could she help feeling very much grieved that she should, however unintentionally, have wounded or displeased him; and if Keefe had wished to make her suffer, in return for the pain she had unconsciously given him, he could not have hit on a better method of doing so.
CHAPTER XX.
The next Sunday evening, Helen sat again alone in the vine arbour, but her looks were not so bright, nor did her thoughts seem so pleasant as the last time Keefe had found her there. She had not seen him since he had left her so abruptly Friday evening, and she was beginning to find out that when Keefe was away, everything seemed more dull and disagreeable than when he was present.
“There’s a meeting down to the school-room to-night, Miss Lennox,” said Mrs. Wendell, coming into the arbour, dressed in her best black silk bonnet and Sunday shawl; “ain’t you coming?”
“No, Mrs. Wendell, my head aches, and the crowd and heat would make it worse. I’ll stay here, in this cool fresh air, till you come back.”
“Well, dear, just as you choose. We can say our prayers as well under the blue sky of heaven, made by God himself, as in any house ever made by the hands of man: the Saviour himself went into the garden and the mount to pray, and it always has seemed to me that His voice speaks plainer to us, through the grass and flowers of the field, and the little birds of the air, that he took his parables from, than through most of the ministers I hear.”
“Yes,” said Helen. “He seems to have loved every form of nature, and yellow corn-fields, fair lilies of the valley, the cedars of Lebanon, and the tiny herb at their feet, the sewer sowing his seed, gardeners and husbandmen, the cherub faces of children, little birds, and harmless sheep; all group themselves round His image, and bring His words home to the hearts of the children of nature in every land.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Wendell, “this Elder Smith, that’s to hold forth to-night, is a strong and powerful preacher, sharp and searching; he’d ’most make you believe the day of judgment was at hand, and that you saw the lightnings, and heard the thunder, and the sound of the trumpet already. I’ve heard folks fairly screaming and crying, under the terror of his words. But when I listen to him, Miss Lennox, I remember that the Lord was not in the earthquake, nor the tempest, nor the whirlwind, but in the still, small voice; and it seems to me that a few plain words on that text, ‘We love Him, because He first loved us,’ might turn more hearts to holiness, than all the wrath ever denounced against sinners.”
“It is true,” said Helen; “much of the preaching we hear might lead us to suppose that God hated the creatures He has made, rather than loved them, and is more calculated to make us regard Him as our tyrant than as our Father.”
“That’s it, dear; there’s the mistake. God is our Father, and, as a father, loves his children; He loves us all. Now I must be going, if I don’t mean to be late.”
She had not gone far before a sudden thought occurred to her, and she returned to the arbour.
“Now don’t you be staying out late in the dew, Miss Lennox, or you’ll catch cold, and then what will Mr. Dillon say when he comes home?”
“Is Mr. Dillon gone from home?” asked Helen.
“Well, he’s gone for three or four days. He started yesterday at daybreak. But I thought you knew. Didn’t he tell you he was going?”
“No, he said nothing about it to me.”
“Well, I expect he won’t stay long; but mind what I say to you about going in before the dew falls, for if you’re looking bad when he comes back he’ll think I didn’t take proper care of you.”
“I don’t need any more care, Mrs. Wendell,” said Helen; “you have petted and indulged me too long. I must do without your kind care now.”
“Indeed, child, such as it is, you’ll always have it while you’re near me. Why are you sitting here all alone, without a book for company! Come in and get a bible, or a hymn-book, or something to read, and don’t sit thinking, thinking; oftentimes too much thought is bad for us.”
“That’s true, Mrs. Wendell,” said Helen, trying to speak cheerfully. “I’ll get a book, and then I shall not be alone while you are away.”
She went for the book, but she did not read many lines; she was thinking too much of Keefe, wondering if he was really vexed with her, and if so, what it was that had annoyed him; or if something with which she had no connection could have made his manner when he left her so different from what it usually was. But she could not solve this problem to her satisfaction then, nor was she able to do so for many a day yet to come, though she gave it as much thought and anxiety as if it was something on which the fate of the universe depended, instead of the peace of mind of one young and sensitive heart. When Mrs. Wendell returned from meeting she found that Helen’s headache was not any better, and that she had gone to bed. Next morning, however, in spite of headache or heartache, at nine o’clock, she opened her school. She had forty pupils, some of them young women of twenty, who scarcely knew the alphabet. There had been no teacher since O’Brien
