"Forgive me--forgive me!" he said, with an air of surprise and sadness, and with a voice trembling with tenderness and respect. "She can not bear to give me the pain of plainly saying that she does not love me," thought Lawrence; and he gently took her hand and laid her arm in his, as if to show that now they understood each other perfectly, and all was well.

"At least, Miss Amy," he said, by-and-by, tranquilly, and with the old cheerfulness, "at least we shall be friends."

Amy Waring bent her head and was silent. It seemed to her that she was suffocating, for his words apprised her how strangely he had mistaken her meaning.

They said nothing more. Arm in arm they passed up Broadway. Every moment Amy Waring supposed the merchant would take leave of her and return to his office. But every moment he was farther from doing it. Abel Newt and Grace Plumer passed them, and opened their eyes; and Grace said to Abel,

"How long has Amy Waring been engaged to your Uncle Lawrence?"

When they reached Amy's door Lawrence Newt raised her hand, bent over it with quaint, courtly respect, held it a moment, then pressed it to his lips. He looked up at her. She was standing on the step; her full, dark eyes, swimming with moisture, were fixed upon his; her luxuriant hair curled over her clear, rich cheeks--youth, love, and beauty, they were all there. Lawrence Newt could hardly believe they were not all his. It was so natural to think so. Somehow he and Amy had grown together. He understood her perfectly.

"Perfectly?" he said to himself. "Why you are holding her hand; you are kissing it with reverence; you are looking into the face which is dearer and lovelier to you than all other human faces; and you are as far off as if oceans rolled between."

CHAPTER XLIV.

CHURCH GOING.

The Sunday bells rang loud from river to river. Loud and sharp they rang in the clear, still air of the summer morning, as if the voice of Everardus Bogardus, the old Dominie of New Amsterdam, were calling the people in many tones to be up and stirring, and eat breakfast, and wash the breakfast things, and be in your places early, with bowed heads and reverend minds, and demurely hear me tell you what sinners you always have been and always will be, so help me God--I, Everardus Bogardus, in the clear summer morning, ding, dong, bell, amen!

So mused Arthur Merlin, between sleeping and waking, as the bells rang out, loud and low--distant and near--flowing like a rushing, swelling tide of music along the dark inlets of narrow streets--touching arid hearts with hope, as the rising water touches dry spots with green. Come you, too, out of your filthy holes and hovels--come to church as in the days when you were young and had mothers, and you, grisly, drunken, blear-eyed thief, lisped in your little lessons--come, all of you, come!

The day has dawned; the air is pure; the hammer rests--come and repent, and be renewed, and be young again. The old, weary, restless, debauched, defeated world--it shall sing and dance. You shall be lambs. I see the dawn of the millennium on the heights of Hoboken--yea, even out of the Jerseys shall a good thing come! It is I who tell you--it is I who order you--I, Everardus Bogardus, Dominie of New Amsterdam--ding, dong, bell, amen!

The streets were quiet and deserted. A single hack rattled under his window, and Arthur could hear its lessening sound until it was lost in the sweet clangor of the bells. He lay in bed, and did not see the people in the street; but he heard the shuffling and the slouching, the dragging step and the bright, quick footfall. There were gay bonnets and black hats already stirring--early worshippers at the mass at St. Peter's or St. Patrick's--but the great population of the city was at home.

Except, among the rest, a young man who comes hastily out of Thiel's, over Stewart's--a young man of flowing black hair and fiery black eyes, which look restlessly and furtively up and down Broadway, which seems to the young man odiously and unnaturally bright. He gains the street with a bound. He hurries along, restless, disordered, excited--the black eyes glancing anxiously about, as if he were jealous of any that should see his yesterday was not over, and that somehow his wild, headlong night had been swept into the serene, open bay of morning. He hurries up the street; tossing many thoughts together--calculating his losses, for the black-haired young man has lost heavily at Thiel's faro-table--wondering about payments--remembering that it is Sunday morning, and that he is to attend a young lady from the South to church--a young lady whose father has millions, if universal understanding be at all correct--thinking of revenge at the table, of certain books full of figures in a certain counting-room, and the story they tell--story known to not half a dozen people in the world; the black-eyed youth, in evening dress, alert, graceful, but now meandering and gliding swiftly like a snake, darts up Broadway, and does not seem to hear the bells, whose first stroke startled him as he sat at play, and which are now ringing strange changes in the peaceful air: Come, Newt! Come, Newt! Abel Newt! Come, Newt! It is I, Everardus, Dominie Bogardus--come, come, come! and be d----d, ding, dong, bell, amen-n-n-n!

Later in the morning the bells rang again. The house doors opened, and the sidewalk swarmed with well-dressed people. Boniface Newt and his wife sedately proceeded to church--not a new bonnet escaping Mrs. Nancy, while May walked tranquilly behind--like an angel going home, as Gabriel Bennet said in his heart when he passed her with his sister Ellen leaning on his arm. The Van Boozenberg carriage rolled along the street, conveying Mr.

and Mrs. Jacob to meditate upon heavenly things. Mrs. Dagon and Mrs. Orry passed, and bowed sweetly, on their way to learn how to love their neighbors as themselves. And among the rest walked Lawrence Newt with Amy Waring, and Arthur Merlin with Hope Wayne.

The painter had heard the voice of the Dominie Bogardus, which his fancy had heard in the air; or was he obeying another Dominie, of a wider parish, whose voice he heard in his heart? It was not often that the painter went to church. More frequently, in his little studio at the top of a house in Fulton Street, he sat smoking meditative cigars during the Sunday hours; or, if the day were auspicious, even touching his canvas!

In vain his sober friends remonstrated. Aunt Winnifred, with whom he lived, was never weary of laboring with him. She laid good books upon the table in his chamber. He returned late at night, often, and found little tracts upon his bureau, upon the chair in which he usually laid his clothes when he retired--yes, even upon his pillow. "Aunt Winnifred's piety leaves its tracts all over my room," he said, smilingly, to Lawrence Newt.

But when the good lady openly attacked him, and said,

"Arthur, how can you? What will people think? Why don't you go to church?"

Arthur replied, with entire coolness,

"Aunt Winnifred, what's the use of going to church when Van Boozenberg goes, and is not in the least discomposed? I'm afraid of the morality of such a place!"

Aunt Winnifred's eyes dilated with horror. She had no argument to throw at Arthur in return, and that reckless fellow always had to help her out.

"However, dear aunt, you go; and I suppose you ought to be quite as good a reason for going as Van Boozenberg for staying away."

After such a conversation it fairly rained tracts in Arthur's room. The shower was only the signal for fresh hostilities upon his part; but for all the hostility Aunt Winnifred was not able to believe her nephew to be a very bad young man.

As he and his friends passed up Broadway toward Chambers Street they met Abel Newt hastening down to Bunker's to accompany Miss Plumer to Grace Church. The young man had bathed and entirely refreshed himself during the hour or two since he had stepped out of Thiel's. There was not a better-dressed man upon Broadway; and many a hospitable feminine eye opened to entertain him as long and as much as possible as he passed by.

He had an unusual flush in his cheek and spring in his step. Perhaps he was excited by the novelty of mixing in a throng of church-goers. He had not done such a thing since on summer Sunday mornings he used to stroll with the other boys along the broad village road, skirted with straggling houses, to Dr. Peewee's. Heavens! in what year was that? he thought, unconsciously. Am I a hundred years old? On those mornings he used to see--Precisely the person he saw at the moment the thought crossed his mind--Hope Wayne--who bowed to him as he passed her party.

How much calmer, statelier, and more softly superior she was than in those old Delafield days!

She remembered, too; and as the lithe, graceful figure of the handsome and fascinating Mr. Abel Newt bent in passing, Arthur Merlin, who felt, at the instant Abel passed, as if his own feet were very large, and his clothes ugly, and his movement stupidly awkward--felt, in fact, as if he looked like a booby--Arthur Merlin observed that his companion went on speaking, that she did not change color, and that her voice was neither hurried nor confused.

Why did the young painter, as he observed these little things, feel as if the sun shone with unusual splendor? Why did he think he had never heard a bird sing so sweetly as one that hung at an open window they passed?

Nay, why in that moment was he almost willing to paint Abel Newt as the Endymion of his great picture?

CHAPTER XLV.

IN CHURCH.

They turned into Chambers Street, in which was the little church where Dr. Channing was to preach. Lawrence Newt led the way up the aisle to his pew. The congregation, which was usually rather small, to-day quite filled the church. There was a general air of intelligence and shrewdness in the faces, which were chiefly of the New England type. Amy Waring saw no one she had ever seen before. In fact, there were but few present in whose veins New England blood did not run, except some curious hearers who had come from a natural desire to see and hear a celebrated man.

When our friends entered the church a slow, solemn voluntary was playing upon the organ. The congregation sat quietly in the pews. Chairs and benches were brought to accommodate the increasing throng. Presently the house was full. The bustle and distraction of entering were over--there was nothing heard but the organ.

In a few moments a slight man, wrapped in a black silk gown, slowly ascended the pulpit stairs, and, before seating himself, stood for a moment looking down at the congregation. His face was small, and thin, and pale; but there was a pure light, an earnest, spiritual sweetness in the eyes--the irradiation of an anxious soul--as they surveyed the people. After a few moments the music stopped. There was perfect silence in the crowded church. Then, moving like a shadow to the desk, the preacher, in a voice that was in singular harmony with the expression of his face, began to read a hymn. His voice had a remarkable cadence, rising and falling with yearning tenderness and sober pathos. It seemed to impart every feeling, every thought, every aspiration of the hymn.

It was full of reverence, gratitude, longing, and resignation:

"While Thee I seek, protecting Power, Be my vain wishes stilled; And may this consecrated hour With better hopes be filled."

When he had read it and sat down again, Hope Wayne felt as if a religious service had already been performed.

The simplicity, and fervor, and long-drawn melody with which he had read the hymn apparently inspired the choir with sympathy, and after a few notes from the organ they began to sing an old familiar tune. It was taken up by the congregation until the church trembled with the sound, and the saunterers in the street outside involuntarily ceased laughing and talking, and, touched by some indefinable association, raised their hats and stood bareheaded in the sunlight, while the solemn music filled the air.

The hymn was sung, the prayer was offered, the chapter was read; then, after a little silence, that calm, refined, anxious, pale, yearning face appeared again at the desk. The preacher balanced himself for a few moments alternately upon each foot--moved his tongue, as if tasting the words he was about to utter--and announced his text: "Peace I leave with you: my peace I give unto you."

He began in the same calm, simple way. A natural, manly candor certified the truth of every word he spoke. The voice--at first high in tone, and swinging, as it were, in long, wave-like inflections--grew gradually deeper, and more equally sustained. There was very little movement of the hands or arms; only now and then the finger was raised, or the hand gently spread and waved. As he warmed in his discourse a kind of celestial grace glimmered about his person, and his pale, thoughtful face kindled and beamed with holy light. His sentences were entirely simple.

There was no rhetoric, no declamation or display. Yet the soul of the hearer seemed to be fused in a spiritual eloquence which, like a white flame, burned all the personality of the speaker away. The people sat as if they were listening to a disembodied soul.

But the appeal and the argument were never to passion, or prejudice, or mere sensibility. Fear and horror, and every kind of physical emotion, so to say, were impossible in the calmness and sweetness of the assurance of the Divine presence. It was a Father whose message the preacher brought.

Like as a father so the Lord pitieth His children, said he, in tones that trickled like tears over the hearts of his hearers, although his voice was equable and unbroken. He went on to show what the children of such a Father must needs be--to show that, however sinful, and erring, and lost, yet the Father had sent to tell them that the doctrine of wrath was of old time; that the eye for the eye, and the tooth for the tooth, was the teaching of an imperfect knowledge; that a faith which was truly childlike knew the Creator only as a parent; and that out of such faith alone arose the life that was worthy of him.

Wandering princes are we! cried the preacher, with a profound ecstasy and exultation in his tone, while the very light of heaven shone in his aspect--wandering princes are we, sons of the Great King. In foreign lands outcast and forlorn, groveling with the very swine in the mire, and pining for the husks that the swine do eat; envying, defying, hating, forgetting--but never hated nor forgot; in the depths of our rage, and impotence, and sin--in the darkest moment of our moral death, when we would crucify the very image of that Parent who pities us--there is one voice deeper and sweeter than all music, the voice of our elder brother pleading with that common Father--"Forgive them, forgive them, for they know not what they do!"

He sat down, but the congregation did not move. Leaning forward, with upraised eyes glistening with tears and beaming with sympathy, with hope, with quickened affection, they sat motionless, seemingly unwilling to destroy the holy calm in which, with him, they had communed with their Father. There were those in the further part of the church who did not hear; but their mouths were open with earnest attention; their eyes glittered with moisture; for they saw afar off that slight, rapt figure; and so strong was the common sympathy of the audience that they seemed to feel what they could not hear.

Lawrence Newt did not look round for Aunt Martha. But he thought of her listening to the discourse, as one thinks of dry fields in a saturating summer rain. She sat through the whole--black, immovable, silent. The people near her looked at her compassionately. They thought she was an inconsolable widow, or a Rachel refusing comfort. Nor, had they watched her, could they have told if she had heard any thing to comfort or relieve her sorrow. From the first word to the last she gazed fixedly at the speaker. With the rest she rose and went out. But as she passed by the pulpit stairs she looked up for a moment at that pallid face, and a finer eye than any human saw that she longed, like another woman of old looking at another teacher, to kiss the hem of his garment. Oh! not by earthquake nor by lightning, but by the soft touch of angels at midnight, is the stone rolled away from the door of the sepulchre.