The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1886-06-16
BEAUTY'SSECRET
By ALAN MUIR
Author Of Vanity Hardicars. ''Colds,
Giris," Etc.
BOOK FIvElcONcIUDED.,
CHAPTER ".

CHAPTER ".
REV. ANTHONY BRENT CEASES TO BE RECTOR
With all her seriousness Sophia had never
| been what we call an ecclesiastical girl. The
| modern fashion of church decoration ard
| other customs of reverence and taste in re-
| hgion, had not at that time fairly arisen: but
| ladies were even then very active in church
work From this Sophia had always kept
aloof, greatly to the surprise of successive
clergymen, who had marked her as likely to
be useful in their parishes. To repeated in
vitations that she would become a district
| visitor or Sunday school teacher Sophia had
| always answered no; and she had never given
any reason for this refusal
Whether she liked dancing, and feared that
her pleasure might be restricted, or what NAV
| have been her reason, l cannot guess Even
| when our rector tried to persuade her to helI
| him. her answer was still a simple no;
nor could the merry little clergyman
by any seni-jocose questioning extract
from her syllable more He turned
about and tried gravity and serious
remonstrance; but with no better result Ac
cordingly Mr. Brent was somewhat sur.
prised when, about six months after his sons
departure, Sophia asked him if she could be
of any use to him in the parish or the Sunday
| school. OF course he accepted her offer
| visitor he found her. But Mr.. Brent noticed
that at their various little meetings Sophis
would manage to linger until the othel
ladies were gone, then she would talk a bit
and somehow the talk always veered about
till it settled on Percival, when Sophia would
ask few questions and be gone. Even little
Mr.. Brent, who was not an observer of things
sometimes felt that these two or three little
sentences about Percival were with Sophis
the business of the day. At an earlier period
of his career he would have broken many g
jest upon this discovery; but jests were by
cones with our poor rector. The twinkle
had fallen from his eye, and the blitheness
had sunk out of his tone. A pallor was steal
ing over his face, and he was fast turning
gray. As one of his parishioners who made
her living by laundry work said, "He looked
like gown that had been to the wash" )" the
colors had run; what remained was himself
and not himself
And now, disregarding for a moment our
small chronology let me dismiss the rector
from this tale, where indeed, he has little
more to do.
Poor Sophia clung to him more than most
of his parishioners and she found a real
pleasure in his society, because it seemed &c
be kind of remote contact with Percival
The bedroom where Percival had slept from
boyhood was in that house. The books he
had read were on the shelves. Here he used
to sit at dinner. There was the garden walk
where he was wont to saunter with his pipe.
She knew the very peg where his hat used to
hang. Somehow he did not seem quite so fan
away when she was In the precincts of his
own home, and the rectors dispirited talk
had certain liveliness for her, because he
was Percivars father. Occasionally, too, she
rxl1, LII Ii
self For instance, one day, asrthey were
walking together to the garden gate, the
rector said:
percy planted thatsrose."
Next week as they went the same way,
Sophia stopped beside the rose tree to pluck
off few withered leaves and make the plant
look trim Mr. Brent, stopping with her,
said in his distracted way:
81 never told you; Percival planted that
rosen
He never told herl Why, by that time she
knew how many leaves were on it, and could
spell its name and knew its prospect of life,
having become for Percivals sake perfect
horticultural actuary.
Then another day the rector said listlessly
for he never joked with her about his son,
and indeed seemed to have only faint re-
fnembrance of that connection:
Il heard from Percy this morning; would
you carr TO hear his letters'
Sophia, who would have lived on bread and
water for week rather than miss one line
her darling wrote, said, trying with miserable
affectation to initiate the rector's apathetic
tone:
@Yes, if it is not troubling you"
Perhaps" Mr.. Brent said, "as you don't
seem greatly to care for it, we need not read
this one, but wait for the next"
n Al
Sophia in a dreadful fix With the instinct
of true generalship, however, she resolved to
recover her lost position by a bold stroke.
81 would not miss hearing it for the world, N
she said audaciously. 20, do read it!n
And the rector, looking up with faint
SMILE like man who remembers something,
took the letter out and read it through.
In none of these letters did Percy mention
her name, until three years after his depart
ure, when one day the rector read this line:
If you erer see the girl toho iods once my
little Sophia, giue her my tope.h
He read it mechanically, as he did every
thing now; then, holding the letter with
loose fingers, it slipped from him and
skinned down under the table, and presently
he was called from the room Sophia dropped
on her knees and caught the sheet up, and
read the line again:
~ yOu eUtT sec tfte ytTt tcfto tcIS Otcc Hty
little Sophia, gfue her my tore."
Bless me, how she kissed that sheeti 1t got
all the love kisses that had been ripening on
her lips for six and thirty months. Had it
been the age of Transformation, that sheet
would surely have turned into lover under
the transmitting power of those kisses. And
then Miss Sophia, who had terribly tender
conscience of her own, looked at the letter,
and colored up at a certain suggestion of her
own mind and wondered would it be very
wrong, and would the rector ever find it out,
and was it very mean of her to do it in the
hope that he would never find it out? And,
deciding on action, she nicely tore off the
finest little morsel of the paper, where on the
last line these precious words were inscribed
and she slipped the shred into her watch case,
where she could look at it night and morning.
The little girl that ,rds my Sophia. "That
isl that shall be! until you bid her ceaseF she
aia thousand times as if that morsel Of
paper were his living spokesman Truly, the
girl was very much in love, and absence
made her heart grow fonder, which is not
usual with either male or female hearts, un-
less | see the world wrongly altogether.
About this time Sophia-and not Sophia
only, but all of us-began to notice that Mr..
Brent looked paler than usual, walked with a
slight drag of the right foot, and sometimes
missed word out of a sentence without
being aware of it. Again, he would observe
the mistake, and correct it with an appear
ance of irritation. @Brain mischief going
on,n old Sparker whispered And he was
right; for one Sunday evening, after preach
ing, the rector suddenly became speechless in
the yestry, and lost his power of motion.
He never spoke syllable again; and even
when he opened his eyes there was no reason
rIcfr, IF II,
came on that night, and blew the golden cock
from off the church steeple, and some of the
masonry with it, The tempest ragged round
/ the rectory garden, and uprooted two great
elm trees, and cast them across the lawn in
| gigantic ruin Meanwhile the rector lay as
quiet if summer breeze was blowing.
There was no storm that could roar loud
enough to disturb his sleep. And in the
morning when we awoLe to see what the
| wind had done in our gardens and parks, we
heard our kind hearted little rector had de-
parted from US forever, just while the storm
was uttering its fercest blast.
| We said that we could have better spared a
| better man, looked grave a moment, re-
marked how uncertain life is and then
talked Of the storm, and forgot the rector.
But to Sophia his death was terrible sor-
row. Somehow Percival seemed gone; she
would hear no more about him. nor have the
remote but stin very actual comfort of talk
| ing with his father and seeing his old haunts.
/ She had borne trials already, and other trials
awaited her, but this was. after all, one of
| the sorest she ever felt. She grew lonely,
| sad, doubling: began TO think Percy would
/ forget her: tried valianfly to battle with her
fears; cried many hours when she was alone,
then wiped her eyes and went downstairs
smilingly, but it was an aching heart that
beat in her breast And the body of the rec
tor was laid to sleep in the churchyard, and
| his successor came The king was dead, and
the cry was, Long live the king.n for we
were all pleased with our new parson- he
preached sermons shorter by five minutes
than those of NJ. Brent He kept two curates,
good looking bachelors He worked the