Four Girls at Chautauqua Part 4

"You would not be afraid of your father, would you? Well, G.o.d is my Father, my reconciled Father;" And then, after a moment, he added: "It I were not at peace with him, and had reason to think that he was angry with me, then it would be different. Then I suppose I should be afraid; at least I think it would be reasonable to be."

Flossy spoke out of the fullness of a troubled heart:

"I don't understand it at all. I never wanted to, either, until just to-night; but now I want to feel as those people did when they sang that hymn."

Marion came quickly up from the other side.

"Flossy," she said, with sudden sharpness, "come over here and watch the track of the boat through the water." And as Flossy mechanically obeyed, she added: "What a foolish, heedless little mouse you are! I wonder that your mother let you go from her sight. Don't you know that you mustn't get up conversations with strange young men in that fas.h.i.+on?"

Flossy had not thought of it at all: but now she said a little drearily, as if the subject did not interest her:

"But I have often held conversations with strange young men at the dancing-hall, you know, and danced with them, too, when _everything_ I knew about them was their names, and generally I forgot that."

Marion gave a light laugh.

"That is different," she said, letting her lip curl in the darkness over the folly of her own words. "What its proper at a dance in very improper coming home from prayer-meeting, don't you see?"

"What do you think!" she said the minute they were in their rooms.

"There was I, leaning meditatively over the boat, thinking solemnly on the truths I had heard, and that absurd little water-proof morsel was having a flirtation with a nice young man. Here is one of the fruits of the system! What on earth was he saying to you, Flossy?"

"Don't!" said Flossy, for the second time that evening. "He wasn't saying any harm."

The whole thing jarred on her with an inexpressible and to her bewildering pain. She had always been ready for fun before.

"That girl is homesick or something," Marion said, as she and Eurie went to their rooms, leaving Flossy with Ruth, who prefered her as a room-mate to either of the others because she _could_ keep from talking.

"I haven't the least idea what is the matter, but she has been as unlike herself as possible. I hope she isn't going to get sick and spoil our fun. How silly we were to bring her, anyway. The baby hasn't life enough to see the frolic of the thing, and the intellectual is miles beyond her. I suspect she was dreadfully bored this evening. But, Eurie, there is going to be some splendid speaking done here. I shouldn't wonder if we attended a good many of the meetings."

CHAPTER V.

UNREST.

Flossy went to the window and stood looking out into the starless night.

The pain in her heart deepened with every moment.

"If there was only some one to ask, some one to say a word to me," she sighed to herself. "It seems as though I could never go to sleep with this feeling clinging to me. I wonder what can be the matter? Perhaps I am sick and am going to die. It feels almost like that, and I am not fit to die--I am afraid. I wonder if Ruth Erskine is afraid to die? I have almost a mind to ask her. I wonder if she ever prays? People who are not afraid of death are always those who pray. Perhaps she will to-night. I feel as though I wanted to pray: I think if I only knew how it would be just the thing to do. If she kneels down I mean to go and kneel beside her."

These were some of the thoughts that whirled through her brain as she stood with her nose pressed to the gla.s.s. But Ruth did not pray. She went around with the composed air of one who was at peace with all the world; and when her elaborate preparations for rest were concluded she laid her head on her pillow without one thought of prayer.

"Why in the name of sense don't you come to bed?" she presently asked, surveying with curious glance the quiet little creature whose face was hidden from her, and who was acting entirely out of accordance with anything she had ever seen in her before. "What can you possibly find to keep you gazing out of that window? It can't be called star-gazing, for to my certain knowledge there isn't a single star visible; in fact, I should say nothing could be visible but the darkness."

For a minute Flossy made no answer. She did not move nor turn her head; but presently she said, in a low and gentle voice:

"Ruth, should you be afraid to die?"

"To die!" said Ruth; and I have no means of telling you what an astonished face and voice she had. "Flossy s.h.i.+pley, what do you mean?"

"Why, I mean _that_," said Flossy, in the same quiet tone. "Of course we have got to die, and everybody knows it; and what I say is, should you be afraid if it were to-night, you know?"

"Humph!" said Ruth, turning her pillow and waiting to beat it into shape before she spoke further. "I haven't the least idea of dying to-night."

"But how can you be _sure_ of that? You might _have_ to die to-night, you know people do sometimes."

"I know one thing, am perfectly certain of it, and that is, that you will take cold standing there and making yourself dismal. You are s.h.i.+vering like a leaf, I can see you from here. If that is all the good to be gotten from the 'religious impressions' that they harp about being so great here, the less religion they have the better, and there is quite little enough you may be sure." Saying which, Ruth turned her pillow again and her head, so that she could not see the small creature at the window. She was unaccountably rasped, not to say startled, by her question, and she did not like to be startled; she liked to have her current of life run smoothly.

As for Flossy, she gave a great sigh of disappointment and unrest, and turned slowly from the window. She had vaguely hoped for help of some sort from Ruth, and as she lay down on her prayerless pillow she said to herself, "If she had only knelt down I should certainly have done so, too; and perhaps I might have been helped out of this dreadful feeling."

Yet so ignorant was she of the way that it never once occurred to her to kneel alone and pray.

No more words were spoken by those two girls that night, but each lay awake for a long time and tossed about restlessly. Ruth had been most effectually disturbed, and try as best she could it was impossible to banish the memory of those quiet words: "You might _have_ to die to-night; people do, you know." To actually _have_ to do something that she had not planned to do and was not quite ready for, would be a new experience to this girl. Yet when would she be ready to plan for dying?

At last she grew thoroughly vexed, and vented her disgust on the "religionists" who got up camp-meeting excitements for the purpose of turning weak brains like Flossy s.h.i.+pley's. After that she went to sleep.

"Flossy s.h.i.+pley, for pity's sake _don't_ rig your self up in that awful cashmere! It rains yet and you will just be going around with five wrinkles on your forehead all day, besides spoiling your dress."

It was morning, and the door of communication between the two sleeping-rooms being thrown open the four girls were in full tide of talk and preparation for Fairpoint. Flossy, though kept her strangely quiet face and manner; the night had not brought her peace; she had tossed restlessly for hours, and when at last she slept it was only to be haunted with troubled dreams. With the first breath of morning she opened her eyes and felt that the weight of yesterday was still pressing on her heart.

"What _shall_ I wear?" she asked, in an absent, bewildered way of Eurie, who had objected to the cashmere.

"I'm sure I don't know. Didn't you bring anything suited to the rain?

Let me go fis.h.i.+ng in that ponderous trunk and see if I can't find something."

The "fis.h.i.+ng" produced nothing more suitable than a heavy black silk, elaborately trimmed, and looking, as Eurie phrased it, "elegantly out of place."

Through much confusion and frolicking the four were at last entering the grounds at Chautauqua. By reason of their superior knowledge Marion and Flossy led the way, while the others followed eagerly, looking and exclaiming.

"I'll tell you what it is, girls," Eurie said, eagerly. "Let's come over here and board. We'll have a tent or a cottage. A tent will be jollier, and it will be twice as much fun as to stay at the hotel."

There being no dissenting voice to this proposal, they started in much glee to look up a home; only Flossy demurred timidly.

"Can't we go to the meeting, girls, and look for the tent afterward? The meeting has commenced; I hear them singing."

"It's nothing in the world but a Bible service," Eurie said. "That man at the gate handed me a programme. Who wants to go to a Bible service?

We have Bibles enough at home. We want to be on hand at eleven o'clock, because Edward Eggleston is to speak on 'The Paradise of Childhood.' My childhood was anything but paradise, but I am anxious to know what he will make of it."

Flossy succ.u.mbed, of course, as every one expected she would; and the party went in search of tents and accommodations. It was no easy matter to suit them, as the patient and courteous President found.

"I don't like the location of any one of them," Ruth Erskine said. Of course she was the hardest to suit. "Why can't we have one of those in that row on the hill?"

"Those are the guest tents, ma'am."

"The guest tents?" Eurie exclaimed, in surprise. "I wonder if they entertain guests here! Who are they?"

"Why, those who have been invited to take part in the exercises, of course. You did not suppose that they paid their own expenses and did the work besides, did you?"

This explanation was given by Marion, who, by virtue of her experience as reporter was better versed in the ways of these great gatherings than the others.