The Voice

CHAPTER II

After that on Sabbath mornings Philippa sat with her father, in the silent upper chamber. At first Henry Roberts, listening—listening—for the Voice, thought, rapturously, that at the eleventh hour he was to win a soul—the most precious soul in his world!—to his faith. But when, after a while, he questioned her, he saw that this was not so; she stayed away from other churches, but not because she cared for his church. This troubled him, for the faith he had outgrown was better than no faith.

"Do you have doubts concerning the soundness of either of the ministers—the old man or the young man?" he asked her, looking at her with mild, anxious eyes.

"Oh no, sir," Philly said, smiling.

"Do you dislike them—the young man or the old man?"

"Oh no, father. I love—one of them."

"Then why not go to his church? Either minister can give you the seeds of salvation; one not less than the other. Why not sit under either ministry?"

"I don't know," Philippa said, faintly.

And indeed she did not know why she absented herself. She only knew two things: that the young man seemed to disapprove of the old man; and when she saw the young man in the pulpit, impersonal and holy, she suffered. Therefore she would not go to hear either man.

When Dr. Lavendar came to call upon her father, he used to glance at Philippa sometimes over his spectacles while Henry Roberts was arguing about prophecies; but he never asked her why she stayed away from church; instead, he talked to her about John Fenn, and he seemed pleased when he heard that the young man was doing his duty in making pastoral calls. "And I—I, unworthy as I was!" Henry Roberts would say, "I heard the Voice, speaking through a sister's lips; and it said: Oh, sinner! for what, for what, what can separate, separate, from the love... Oh, nothing. Oh, nothing. Oh, nothing."

He would stare at Dr. Lavendar with parted lips. "I HEARD IT," he would say, in a whisper.

And Dr. Lavendar, bending his head gravely, would be silent for a respectful moment, and then he would look at Philippa. "You are teaching Fenn's sister to sew?" he would say. "Very nice! Very nice!"

Philly saw a good deal of the sister that summer; the young minister, recognizing Miss Philippa's fondness for Mary, and remembering a text as to the leading of a child, took pains to bring the little girl to Henry Roberts's door once or twice a week; and as August burned away into September Philippa's pleasure in her was like a soft wind blowing on the embers of her heart and kindling a flame for which she knew no name. She thought constantly of Mary, and had many small anxieties about her—her dress, her manners, her health; she even took the child into Old Chester one day to get William King to pull a little loose white tooth. Philly shook very much during the operation and mingled her tears with Mary's in that empty and bleeding moment that follows the loss of a tooth. She was so passionately tender with the little girl that the doctor told Dr. Lavendar that his match-making scheme seemed likely to prosper—"she's so fond of the sister, you should have heard her sympathize with the little thing!—that I think she will smile on the brother," he said.

"I'm afraid the brother hasn't cut his wisdom teeth yet," Dr. Lavendar said, doubtfully; "if he had, you might pull them, and she could sympathize with him; then it would all arrange itself. Well, he's a nice boy, a nice boy;—and he won't know so much when he gets a little older."

It was on the way home from Dr. King's that Philippa's feeling of responsibility about Mary brought her a sudden temptation. They were walking hand in hand along the road. The leaves on the mottled branches of the sycamores were thinning now, and the sunshine fell warm upon the two young things, who were still a little shaken from the frightful experience of tooth-pulling. The doctor had put the small white tooth in a box and gravely presented it to Mary, and now, as they walked along, she stopped sometimes to examine it and say, proudly, how she had "bleeded and bleeded!"

"Will you tell brother the doctor said I behaved better than the circus lion when his tooth was pulled?"

"Indeed I will, Mary!"

"An' he said he'd rather pull my tooth than a lion's tooth?"

"Of course I'll tell him."

"Miss Philly, shall I dream of my tooth, do you suppose?"

Philippa laughed and said she didn't know.

"I hope I will; it means something nice. I forget what, now."

"Dreams don't mean anything, Mary."

"Oh yes, they do!" the child assured her, skipping along with one arm round the girl's slender waist. "Mrs. Semple has a dream-book, and she reads it to me every day, an' she reads me what my dreams mean. Sometimes I haven't any dreams," Mary admitted, regretfully, "but she reads all the same. Did you ever dream about a black ox walking on its back legs? I never did. I don't want to. It means trouble."

"Goosey!" said Miss Philippa.

"If you dream of the moon," Mary went on, happily, "it means you are going to have a beau who'll love you."

"Little girls mustn't talk about love," Philippa said, gravely; but the color came suddenly into her face. To dream of the moon means—Why! but only the night before she had dreamed that she had been walking in the fields and had seen the moon rise over shocks of corn that stood against the sky like the plumed heads of Indian warriors! "Such things are foolish, Mary," Miss Philly said, her cheeks very pink. And while Mary chattered on about Mrs. Semple's book Philippa was silent, remembering how yellow the great flat disk of the moon had been in her dream; how it pushed up from behind the black edge of the world, and how, suddenly, the misty stubble-field was flooded with its strange light:—"you are going to have a beau!"

Philippa wished she might see the book, just to know what sort of things were read to Mary. "It isn't right to read them to the child," she thought; "it's a foolish book, Mary," she said, aloud. "I never saw such a book."

"I'll bring it the next time I come," Mary promised.

"Oh no, no," Philly said, a little breathlessly; "it's a wrong book. I couldn't read such a book, except—except to tell you how foolish and wrong it is."

Mary was not concerned with her friend's reasons; but she remembered to bring the ragged old book with her the very next time her brother dropped her at Mr. Roberts's gate to spend an hour with Miss Philippa. There had to be a few formal words between the preacher and the sinner before Mary had entire possession of her playmate, but when her brother drove away, promising to call for her later in the afternoon, she became so engrossed in the important task of picking hollyhock seeds that she quite forgot the dream-book. The air was hazy with autumn, and full of the scent of fallen leaves and dew-drenched grass and of the fresh tan-bark on the garden paths. On the other side of the road was a corn-field, where the corn stood in great shocks. Philly looked over at it, and drew a quick breath,—her dream!

"Did you bring that foolish book?" she said.

Mary, slapping her pocket, laughed loudly. "I 'most forgot! Yes, ma'am; I got it. I'll show what it says about the black ox—"

"No; you needn't," Miss Philly said; "you pick some more seeds for me, and I'll—just look at it." She touched the stained old book with shrinking fingertips; the moldering leather cover and the odor of soiled and thumb-marked leaves offended her. The first page was folded over, and when she spread it out, the yellowing paper cracked along its ancient creases; it was a map, with the signs of the Zodiac; in the middle was a single verse:

Mortal! Wouldst thou scan aright
Dreams and visions of the night?
Wouldst thou future secrets learn
And the fate of dreams discern?
Wouldst thou ope the Curtain dark
And thy future fortune mark?
Try the mystic page, and read
What the vision has decreed.

Philly, holding her red lip between her teeth, turned the pages:

"MONEY. TO DREAM OF FINDING MONEY; MOURNING AND LOSS.

"MONKEY. YOU HAVE SECRET ENEMIES.

"MOON." (Philippa shivered.) "A GOOD OMEN; IT DENOTES COMING JOY. GREAT SUCCESS IN LOVE."

She shut the book sharply, then opened it again. Such books sometimes told (so foolishly!) of charms which would bring love. She looked furtively at Mary; but the child, pulling down a great hollyhock to pick the fuzzy yellow disks, was not noticing Miss Philly's interest in the "foolish book." Philippa turned over the pages. Yes; the charms were there!...

Instructions for making dumb-cake, to cut which reveals a lover: "ANY NUMBER OF YOUNG FEMALES SHALL TAKE A HANDFUL OF WHEATEN FLOUR—" That was no use; there were too many females as it was!

"TO KNOW WHETHER A MAN SHALL HAVE THE WOMAN HE WISHES." Philippa sighed. Not that. A holy man does not "wish" for a woman.

"A CHARM TO CHARM A MAN'S LOVE." The blood suddenly ran tingling in Philly's veins. "LET A YOUNG MAID PICK OF ROSEMARY TWO ROOTS; OF MONK'S-HOOD—"

A line had been drawn through this last word, and another word written above it; but the ink was so faded, the page so woolly and thin with use, that it was impossible to decipher the correction; perhaps it was "mother-wort," an herb Philly did not know; or it might be "mandrake"? It looked as much like one as the other, the writing was so blurred and dim. "It is best to take what the book says," Philly said, simply; "besides, I haven't those other things in the garden, and I have monk's-hood and rosemary—if I should want to do it, just for fun."

"OF MONK'S-HOOD TWO ROOTS, AND OF THE FLOWER OF CORN TEN THREADS; LET HER SLEEP ON THEM ONE NIGHT. IN THE MORNING, LET HER SET THEM ON HER HEART AND WALK BACKWARDS TEN STEPS, PRAYING FOR THE LOVE OF HER BELOVED. LET HER THEN STEEP AND BOIL THESE THINGS IN FOUR GILLS OF PURE WATER ON WHICH THE MOON HAS SHONE FOR ONE NIGHT. WHEN SHE SHALL ADD THIS PHILTER TO THE DRINK OF THE ONE WHO LOVES HER NOT, HE SHALL LOVE THE FEMALE WHO MEETS HIS EYE FIRST AFTER THE DRINKING THEREOF. THEREFORE LET THE YOUNG MAID BE INDUSTRIOUS TO STAND BEFORE HIM WHEN HE SHALL DRINK IT."

"There is no harm in it," said Philly.