"I'll try, mamma--if you wish it."
"I wish it, of course. You never know how useful such an acquaintance may be to you. Is he engaged to that girl?"
"I think not, mamma. She says not."
"That don't prove anything, though."
"Yes, it does, with her. Dolly Copley was always downright--not like the rest."
"Every girl thinks it is fair to fib about her lovers. However, I thought _he_ looked at you, Christina, not exactly as if he were a bound man."
"He is too late," said the girl carelessly. "I am a bound woman."
"Well, be civil to him," said her mother. "You never know what people may do."
"I don't care, mamma. Mr. St. Leger's doings are of no importance to me."
Mrs. Thayer was silent now; and her husband remarked that Mr. St. Leger could not do better than pick up that pretty, wise-eyed little girl.
"Wise-eyed! she is that, isn't she?" cried Christina. "She always was.
She is grown up wonderfully pretty."
"She is no more to be compared to you, than--well, never mind," said Mrs. Thayer. "I hope we shall see more of them at Christmas. Talk of eyes,--Mr. St. Leger's eyes are beautiful. Did you notice them?"
Dolly on her side had seen the party descend the rocks, looking after them with an odd feeling or mixture of feelings. The meeting with her school friend had brought up sudden contrasts never so sharply presented to her before. The gay carelessness of those old times, the warm shelter of her Aunt Hal's home, the absolute trust in her father and mother,--where was all that now? Dolly saw Christina's placid features and secure gaiety, saw her surrounded and sheltered by her parents' arms, strong to guard and defend her; and she seemed to herself lonely. It fell to her to guard and defend her mother; and her father? what was he about?--There swept over her an exceeding bitter cry of desolateness, unuttered, but as it were the cry of her whole soul; with again that sting of pain which seemed unendurable, how can a father let his child be ashamed of him! She turned away that St. Leger might not see her face; she felt it was terribly grave; and betook herself now to the examination of the church.
And the still beauty and loftiness of the place wrought upon her by and by with a strange effect. Wandering along among pillars and galleries and arcades, where saints and apostles and martyrs looked down upon her as out of past ages, she seemed to be surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses." They looked down upon her with grave, high sympathy, or they looked up with grave, high love and trust; they testified to work done and dangers met, and suffering borne, for Christ,--and to the glory awaiting them, and to which they then looked forward, and which now they had been enjoying--how long? What mattered the little troubled human day, so that heaven's long sunshine set in at the end of it? And that sun "shall no more go down." Dolly roved on and on, going from one to another sometimes lovely sometimes stern old image; and gradually she forgot the nineteenth century, and dropped back into the past, and so came to take a distant and impartial view of herself and her own life; getting a better standard by which to measure the one and regulate the other. She too could live and work for Christ. What though the work were different and less noteworthy; what matter, so that she were doing what He gave her to do? Not to make a noise in the world, either by preaching or dying; not to bear persecution; just to live true and shine, to comfort and cheer her mother, to reclaim and save her father, to trust and be glad! Yes, less than that latter would not do full honour to her Master or His truth; and so much as that He would surely help her to attain. Dolly wandered about the cathedral, and mused, and prayed, and grew quiet and strong, she thought; while her mother was viewing the church treasures with Mr. St. Leger, Dolly excused herself, preferring the church.
"Dolly, Dolly," said Mrs. Copley when at last she came away, "you don't know what you have lost."
"It is not so much as I have gained, mother."
"I'm glad we have seen it, Mr. St. Leger; and I'm glad we have done with it! I don't want to see any more sights till we get to Venice.
Where are the Thayers going, Dolly?"
"To Cologne, mother, and to Nice and Mentone, they said."
"I wish they were coming to Venice. How fat Christina has grown!"
"O mother! She is a regular beauty--she could not do with less flesh; she ought not to lose an ounce of it. She is not fat. She is perfect.
Is she not, Mr. St. Leger?"
Lawrence assented that Miss Thayer had the symmetry of a beautiful statue.
"Too fat," said Mrs. Copley. "If she is a statue now, what will she be by and by? I don't like that sort of beauties. Her face wants life."
"It does not want sweetness," said Lawrence. "It is a very attractive face."
"I am glad we stopped here, if it was only for the meeting them," said Mrs. Copley. "But I can't see how you could miss all those diamonds and gold and silver things, Dolly. They were just wonderful."
"All the Green vaults did not give me the pleasure this old church did, mother."
CHAPTER XXI.
VENICE.
"You and your friend are the most perfect contrast," remarked Lawrence as they were driving away. "She is repose in action--and you are activity in repose."
"That sounds well," Dolly answered after a pause. "I am trying to think whether there is any meaning in it."
"Certainly; or I hope so. She is placidity itself; one wonders if she could be anything but placid; while you"----
"Never mind about me," said Dolly hastily. "I am longing to know whether mother will like Venice."
"Shall you?"
"Oh, I like everything."
Which was the blissful truth. Even anxiety did not prevent its being the truth; perhaps anxiety even at times put a keener edge upon enjoyment; Dolly fled from troublesome thoughts to the beauties of a landscape, the marvels of a piece of mediaeval architecture, the bewitchment of a bit of painting from an old master's hand; and tasted, and lingered, and tasted over again in memory, all the beauty and the marvel and the bewitchment. Lawrence smiled to himself at the thought of what she would find in Venice.
"There's one thing I don't make out," Rupert broke in.
"Only one?" said Lawrence. But the other was too intent to heed him.
"It bothers me, why the people that could build such a grand church, couldn't make better houses for themselves."
"Ah!" said Lawrence. "You manage that better in America?"
"If we didn't--I'd emigrate! We don't have such splendid things as that old pile of stones,"--looking back at the dome,--"but our farmhouses are a long sight ahead of this country."
"I guess, Rupert," Dolly remarked now, "the men that built the dome did not build the farmhouses."
"Who built the dome, as you call it, then? But I don't see any dome; there's only a nest of towers."
"The nobles built the great cathedrals."
"And if you went through one of _their_ houses," said Lawrence, "you would not think they neglected number one. You never saw anything like an old German _schloss_ in America."
"Then the nobles had all the money?"
"Pretty much so. Except the rich merchants in some of the cities; and _they_ built grand churches and halls and the like, and made themselves happy with magnificence at home in other ways; not architecture."
"I am glad I don't belong here," said Rupert. "But don't the people know any better?"
"Than what?"
"Than to let the grand folks have it all their own way?"