The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.]Le Gallienne, Richard
General
The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.]
Le Gallienne, Richard
Clergy -- England -- Fiction; English fiction -- 19th century; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction
that made you feel what a strange holy thing love was, after all; and
then there was a curious verse with nothing but women's names in it, yet
somehow it seemed the loveliest of all; and when again you came out of
the voice, you were not crying but feeling wonderfully blest somehow and
rather frightened. Jenny sent a wonderful look to Theophil--it was so
they should bathe together in God's sight--and Theophil sent back as
wonderful a look as a chairman dare venture on. Otherwise, of course, it
would have been as wonderful as Jenny's.
Thus did Isabel Strange recite at New Zion; and perhaps one can best
judge of the impression she made, from the fact that the little boys at
the back, who during the last lecture on "Henrik Ibsen" had discovered
a most exciting new way of making continued existence possible, quite
forgot it and would have to keep it for Sunday afternoon Sunday-school.
Everyone went home in a dream, and little Jenny shone like a light with
the excitement and wonder of it all.
"How wonderful you are! Doesn't it seem strange to be so wonderful?"
said Jenny afterwards, as the two girls took off their outdoor things in
Jenny's room.
"Dear child!" said Isabel, kissing Jenny on her brow, "it is you that
are wonderful."
There is no joy in the world better worth seeing, better worth living,
than the joy of young people with the same dreams, the same thoughts,
and--so important--the same words for them, blown together by some
unexpected conjunction of the four winds, met by some blissful
dispensation of the planets of youth.
There have been periods in history especially favourable for the ecstasy
of such meetings, early mornings of the human spirit, when lovely new
truth and lovely new beauty were dawning wild and dewy in the strange
east, and while the deep breathing of the older generations still asleep
made a more wonderful loneliness of dawn, for the hushed and happy bands
of young people holding each other's hands and watching in the
magic twilight.
To have been young in Italy in the time of Dante, in England in the time
of Shakespeare, and to have met in such a mighty morning--with danger
too to keep us grateful. Ah, we have missed those dawns; and yet I doubt
if the whole recovered beauty of Greece and Rome, or the thrilling new
fashions in romance and poetry wafted across the seas from Italy to help
make Shakespeare, ever gave young people a keener thrill of newness and
mystery than the books and pictures so eagerly discussed by the little
group that gathered over supper that night in 3 Zion Place.
To have read "The House of Life!"--to have seen the "Venus
Verticordia"! Ah! that was life! And Isabel had actually been to Mr.
G.F. Watts's studio--walked about there a whole afternoon. The young New
Zioners looked at her.
"O Theophil, we _must_ go to London," cried Jenny. She meant when they
were married.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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