Up the Hill and Over eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 381 pages of information about Up the Hill and Over.

Up the Hill and Over eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 381 pages of information about Up the Hill and Over.

The singing of the psalm and the reading were long drawn out wearinesses.  Esther had not come to church to worship that morning.  We do not comment upon her attitude.  We merely state it.  To-day, church, the service and all that it stood for had been absolutely outside of her emotions.  Yet with the prayer came the thought of God and with the thought a thrill of angry fear—­a fear which was an inevitable after effect of her very orthodox training.  God, she felt dimly, did not like people to be very happy.  He was a jealous God.  He was probably angry now because she had come to church thinking more of Dr. Callandar than of Him.  “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me!” Awful, mystical words!  Did they mean that one couldn’t have any human god at all?  Not even a near, kind protecting god—­like the doctor?  It frightened her.

She found herself explaining to God that her lover was not really a rival.  That although she loved him so terribly it was in quite a different way and would never interfere with her religious duties.  Then, feeling the futility of this, she pretended carelessness, trying to deceive God into the belief that she didn’t think so very much of the doctor anyway.

This was in the prayer, while she sat with her eyes decorously shaded by her hand.  Above her in the pulpit, the minister in an ecstasy of petition set forth the needs of the church, the state and the individual.  Esther did not hear a word until a sudden dropping of his voice forced a certain phrase upon her attention.  He was praying, with an especial poignancy for “that blessing which maketh rich and addeth no sorrow.”

Was there such a blessing?  A blessing which would make rich and add no sorrow?  No wonder the minister prayed for it.  To Esther, whose mind was saturated with the idea of God as the author of chastenings, the possibility came with a shock of joy.  She, too, began to pray, and she prayed for one thing only, over and over—­the blessing that maketh rich and addeth no sorrow.  There was no need, she felt, to specify further.  God was sure to guess what blessing she meant.

A subdued rustle, a swaying as of barley in a gentle breeze and the prayer was over.  Esther removed her hand from her eyes and looked up at the minister.  For a tiny second his glance met hers.  A thrill shot through her, a thrill of dismay.  With all the force of a new idea, it came to her that she and he were in the same parlous case.  He loved her, as she loved—­somebody else.

And that meant that he must suffer, suffer as she had suffered last night.  Last week when he had told her of his love she had been surprised, sorry and a little angry.  But last week he had spoken of unknown things.  Love and suffering had been words to her then, now they were realities.

Then, for she was learning quickly now, came another flash of enlightenment.  They had been praying for the same thing.  He, too, had prayed for the blessing which maketh rich—­and he had meant her.  She knew it.  He had been asking God to give her to him.  Horrible!

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Up the Hill and Over from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.