Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Nature -- Fiction; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction; Wales -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
Mr. James' daughter played a voluntary, in the midst of which an
altercation was heard outside.
'Her'll be lonesome wi'out me!'
'They wunna like it. It's blasphemy.'
Then the door opened, and Abel, very perspiring, and conscious of the
greatness of the occasion, led in Hazel in her wreath of drooping
lilies. The green light touched her face with unnatural pallor, and her
eyes, haunted by some old evil out of the darkness of life, looked
towards Edward as to a saviour.
She might have been one of those brides from faery, who rose wraith-like
out of a pool or river, and had some mysterious ichor in their veins,
and slipped from the grasp of mortal lover, melting like snow at a
touch. Edward, watching her, was seized with an inexplicable fear.
He wished she had not been so strangely beautiful, that the scent
of lilies had not brought so heavy a faintness, reminding him of
death-chambers.
It was not till Hazel reached the top of the chapel that the
congregation observed Foxy, a small red figure, trotting willingly in
Hazel's wake--a loving though incompetent bridesmaid.
Mr. James arose and walked up the chapel.
'I will remove the animal' he said; then he saw that Hazel was leading
Foxy. This insult was, then, deliberate. 'A hanimal,' he said, 'hasn't
no business in a place o' worship.'
'What for not?' asked Hazel.
'Because--' Mr. James found himself unable to go on. 'Because not,' he
finished blusterously. He laid his hand on the cord, but Foxy prepared
for conflict.
Edward's colleague turned away, hand to mouth. He was obliged to
contemplate the ivy outside the window while the altercation lasted.
'Whoever made you,' Hazel said, 'made Foxy. Where you can come, Foxy
can come. You'm deacon, Foxy's bridesmaid!'
'That's heathen talk,' said Mr. James.
'How very naughty Hazel is!' thought poor Mrs. Marston. She felt that
she could never hold up her head again. The congregation giggled. The
black grapes and the chenille spots trembled. 'How very unpleasant!'
thought the old lady.
Then Edward spoke, and his voice had an edge of masterfulness that
astonished Mr. James.
'Let be,' he said. '"Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.
Them also will I bring." She has the same master, James.'
Silence fell. The other minister turned round with a surprised,
admiring glance at Edward, and the service began. It was short and
simple, but it gathered an extraordinary pathos as it progressed.
The narcissi on the window-sills eyed Hazel in a white silence, and
their dewy golden eyes seemed akin to Foxy's and her own. The fragrance
of spring flowers filled the place with wistful sadness. There are no
scents so tearful, so grievous, as the scents of valley-lilies and
narcissi clustered ghostly by the dark garden hedge, and white lilac,
freighted with old dreams, and pansies, faintly reminiscent of
mysterious lost ecstasy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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