The next Sunday they went to the mission to church.
Thurlow had almost forgotten the blue-eyed girl in the meanwhile. His mind had been engaged in watching for a letter from Barbara Sherwood—a real letter, not just a scrawl around some pictures of herself and his rivals. He had brooded not a little over the subject and had told himself bitterly that he would not write her a word until he had a real letter from her, the kind of letter she used to write when he first went away to college.
There had been good reasons, every Sunday since the stranger had knocked at the door asking the way, why the Reeds couldn’t go to the little church, but now Thurlow could evade it no longer, and they went.
The girl, what was her name? Oh yes, Sandra Cameron—came toward them with a smile as they entered.
“You have come at last,” she said. “I’m so glad. Here I’ve been telling everybody down here what a musical find I had discovered, and then you never came!”
“We couldn’t come sooner, my dear,” said Mrs. Reed, looking about her on the neat little auditorium with pleasure. “We had so much to do getting settled. But we’ve been meaning to come.”
“Well, it couldn’t be more opportune,” said Sandra, “for the man who leads the singing is down with the flu, and there isn’t a soul to play the little old tinny-sounding piano.”
“Oh, but you’re not going to put us to work for the first day out, are you?” objected Thurlow in a panic, almost ready to turn and flee.
There was something in the blue eyes as the girl looked up at him wistfully that made him yield after all and stalk up to the front behind her. Rilla had already succumbed and was being led to the piano. So they settled down as naturally as if it had been their home church.
Sandra found a comfortable place for Mrs. Reed near the front, provided her with a hymnbook and Bible—there were plenty of Bibles for everybody, scattered all over the room—and then settled down with a flock of young girls.
“But don’t you play yourself?” Rilla had asked when requested to do the playing.
“Why yes, a little,” said Sandra, “but you see, it’s important for me to sit with those girls. They are so young and full of spirit, and they will whisper and giggle in the midst of the very most interesting part of the service unless someone is there to keep them quiet. Besides, my playing isn’t so great. I haven’t got that leading quality that I recognized in you. You’re used to playing for singing.”
“Only for my brother and a little at school,” said Rilla.
“Well, then you have a lot of talent.” Sandra smiled, and there came a glow into Rilla’s sad, young heart. She had felt so separated from all her kind and from the life she had known in the old home, and somehow it seemed especially desolate on Meachin Street on Sundays. But here, given something real to do, being a part of a service that had a spirit of worship right from the start, new hope sprang up within her, so she turned to the page in the hymnbook with pleasure.
The place was filling rapidly. They were not stylish people, but there were many who were refined looking. They wore simple clothes, but Rill’s keen, young eyes detected a certain air of sophistication that rested her. Perhaps she was a snob, she thought to herself, but she would have hated it if all the people down here had been like that awful O’Hennessy woman, Bat’s mother. Yet there were some of the poorer class, too. Not quite so far down in the social scale as Bat’s mother—not dirty nor ragged, not quite so ignorant—but plenty of very plain, decent people with clean but mended garments, old-fashioned and odd, some of them, but most of them with that look of eagerness in their eyes, that hunger for what they evidently found in this house of God.
If Rilla had been given her choice, she would not have selected this plain little chapel in this out-of-the-way corner of the city for her regular place of worship, but since they were aliens from their own natural environment, and since her sore, young heart longed to hide from her old associates, she was glad that so tolerable a place had been found, for she knew her mother would never have been satisfied to stay away perpetually from church as they had been doing since they moved. So Rilla was pleased and interested and struck the first chords of the opening hymn with her firm, true touch, making the little congregation sit up and take notice of the sweet-faced girl who was at the piano.
And there was Thurlow standing up on the platform, quite at his ease, conducting the music. His rich, full voice rang out, thrilling the little church and filling the listeners with a joyous astonishment, making everybody, whether they could sing or not, join in. Of course Thurlow had sung a lot at college. He had been leader of the Glee Club last winter. Of course he wouldn’t mind conducting a little crowd of plain people like this. Rilla’s heart swelled with pride. She was proud of her brother and her brother’s lovely voice.
The singing went well. The people took hold with a will. Thurlow sang a solo, and his mother sat there with tears in her eyes, which she would not let fall, and thought of her boy, her dear boy, going to be a policeman. Oh, if his father could know, how unhappy he would be—even in heaven! Or would he? Did a heavenly point of view show up reasons that earthly minds could not foresee? Was God directing this summary move of Thurlow’s, or was it the devil, as she had been thinking? She watched her boy as he sang the tender words of the hymn the minister had requested.
‘“Man of sorrows,’ what a name
For the Son of God who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim!
Hallelujah! What a Savior!”
She was proud of her boy. But she wondered if he was really a child of that Savior. Oh, he was a church member. Both of her children had united with the church when they were quite young, but did they really trust her God? She wished she knew. The future loomed dark for both of them, and she felt so weary sometimes and so unable to guide them. It seemed a hard way ahead in spite of the indomitable spirit.
They lingered to talk a few minutes with some of the people. The minister was most cordial and friendly and said he and his wife would come and see them. The girl Sandra smiled upon them as if they were old acquaintances. It was all very pleasant.
They walked home slowly through the dark streets. The pavement was very rough, and the young man held his mother’s arm and guided her over the bad places.
“Well, what did you think of it?” asked the mother fearfully. If Thurlow didn’t like it, she would have trouble getting him to go again. He hadn’t been liking their regular minister at all lately.
“Why, I thought it was all very pleasant,” he said, “didn’t you? They seem a lot friendlier than back at our old church. I liked that preacher. He isn’t high-hat; he seems human. And he made the Bible a lot clearer than anybody I ever heard preach before.”
“Yes,” said Rilla. “I liked him. I’m going up to join that Bible class they say he has. He’s asked me to play every Sunday. The woman they had has gone away for the winter to teach somewhere. They say she wasn’t very good anyway. And they asked you to sing again, didn’t they, Thurl? Did you tell him you would?”
“I told him I wasn’t sure what times I would have off yet,” said Thurlow with a reserve in his tone, and they suddenly fell silent, thinking about Thurlow as a policeman. He went on duty for the first time tomorrow morning, and it was like a heavy weight on their hearts as they thought of it. It was respectable, of course, and it was grand of him to insist on working and being on his own and protecting them. But—a policeman! They had always thought of him as winning honors in college and then becoming a professor or a specialist of some kind, either in machinery or medicine or some really intellectual job.
Slowly they walked through dark, narrow streets with lumpy brick pavement of ancient setting never repaired, streets where people huddled in corners, two or three together, and conversed furtively, streets where the only lights were brilliant red names of different liquors set forth in weird picture-letters. Life was set for them hereafter in sordid places, and the only bright thought seemed to be the plain, little, friendly chapel where God was honored. What was it all for? They wondered, each in his or her own separate thoughts. Was it some lesson to be learned, some punishment—for what? Was it for always, or would the weird, unhappy dream pass and they wake up again happy in the right kind of a home?
But when they turned into Meachin Street, there was their light burning clearly from the mantel in the little parlor. Strange to think that little, drab cottage with the unfinished lean-to was their only home! The mother looked ahead with troubled eyes. Perhaps she ought not to have brought them down here. Perhaps she was all wrong and ought to have put away her pride and insisted that they go to some of their father’s friends and borrow some money. Or insisted that Thurlow take it from his fraternity brothers. Anything rather than to let him give up altogether his connection with the world of letters. How his father would have grieved if he had known.
As they passed the O’Hennessy homestead, there were sounds of loud altercation, oaths flung back and forth in high screaming tones and deep vindictive roars, a smart stinging slap with an outcry, and the crashing of some article of furniture as it came into collision with an old-fashioned iron stove. The sounds were so definite that one could identify them almost as if seeing them. There likely went Mrs. O’Hennessy’s second chair. Now both Bat and his mother would have to stand whenever the old man was at home. Mrs. Reed shuddered as she went by. Stealthy shadows seemed to move crazily away from the front of the shack and fade into darkness. What a neighborhood to have to live in! Oh, why didn’t she realize how impossible it was going to be? But it was too late now to do anything. It would cost too much to move, even if there was a place they could possibly afford.
The brightness from the cottage shone out and made a path of light toward them as they arrived in front of their own place, and Mrs. Reed hastened up the walk, glad that here at least was a refuge from the night and the dirt and the unwholesomeness. The house they had managed to clean up till its interior at least was bearable. When spring came, they might be able to do something with the outside of the house also, and the yard. But they couldn’t be expected to clean up the neighborhood. Even if their neighbors made an attempt to clean up their filthy yards and houses a little, following their example, that wouldn’t clean up the moral atmosphere. Oh, God, did You send us down here to do that? To teach these people how to be saved? How to live better lives? It didn’t seem as if it could be any worse, nor as bad, over in Africa or China or India or any of the God-forgetting countries where people went to be missionaries. Could it be that because they had failed to take an interest in spreading His Gospel through the world, He had put what was left of the Reeds’ happy family down into this terrible place to shine for Him? To witness for Him in this, one of the darkest places she had ever seen? Could there be darker places than this yet on the earth?
Mother Reed went quickly up the steps and waited fearfully while Thurlow unlocked the door, in sudden panic to get out of this dark strange night that was all around her and seemed so infested with shadowy presences and wild, angry noises mingled with drunken curses.
So they stepped inside the cottage and talked cheerfully to one another. Thurlow lit two more lamps.
“Let’s have a try at some of those hymns, Rilla,” he said as he set one of the lamps where its light fell on the music rack. “My, I’m thirsty. I’ll get a pitcher of water.”
He took one of the smaller lamps and went through the new dining room to the kitchen. They had only moved their furniture into it a couple of days before, and it still looked pleasant and interesting to them. But as he passed through he noticed that both doors of the sideboard were standing wide open and three of the drawers were partway pulled out. It struck him absentmindedly as strange that Rilla had been so careless, but he was thirsty and went on into the kitchen to get the water.
But as he set the lamp down on the kitchen table, its light fell in a half circle on the neat oilcloth of the floor, and there right in the middle of the radius of light he saw a big, muddy footprint!
He stooped down in horror and studied it. Yes, it was mud! A real footprint. He couldn’t explain it. Then he felt a draught of air and, looking up, he found that the back kitchen window was up halfway. And he had left it carefully locked. That was the last thing he did before he went out to church, lock every window.
Examination of the window catch showed that it had been jimmied open and that the window fastener was broken, snapped in two. Someone had been breaking in. He went swiftly back in the dining room, glancing into the open doors and drawers, but a hasty glance could not seem to find that anything was missing. He closed the drawers and doors quietly and went back to the kitchen, giving a quick look around. Someone had been in here. What for?
He put the window down softly, setting the broken catch in place. Mother mustn’t know about this. He must manage somehow to make things safe without startling her and Rilla. Not tonight anyway. They wouldn’t sleep.
While he was getting the pitcher of water, he was thinking what to do. Then he went to his toolbox, which was under the kitchen table, took out his brace and bit, and quickly drilled a hole straight through the window sashes to within a quarter of an inch of the outside, and in this he inserted a stout spike of a nail, drawing the white curtain in place over it and gathering up the chips from the hole. The window was firmly fastened now and could not be opened from outside unless they used dynamite.
“What on earth are you doing, Thurlow?” called Rilla. “I thought you wanted to sing.”
“Coming,” sang Thurlow cheerfully. “I’m bringing you a pitcher of water. There aren’t any apples, are there, Mother?”
“Why, no child,” said his mother, appearing in the door. “You aren’t hungry again, are you? Would you like a sandwich? I’ll get you one.”
Thurlow swept his handkerchief over the footprint, gathering up the mud. He swiftly stowed it in his pocket. Then, taking the lamp in one hand and the pitcher in the other, he hurried back to the living room, saying the first crazy thing that came into his head so that his mother should not suspect how troubled he was.
“Lamps and pitchers!” He laughed. “You haven’t either of you got a trumpet, have you? Wasn’t there some old guy in the Bible did something with lamps, pitchers, and trumpets?”
“That was Gideon,” Rilla said laughingly. “You don’t suppose we’re put here to surround Meachin Street and smash our pitchers and blow our trumpets and let our light shine and take Meachin Street, do you?”
“Well, there might be worse duties then taking Meachin Street for the Lord,” said the mother.
“Yes, let’s take Meachin Street,” said Thurlow grimly. “Which song shall we sing in place of blowing our trumpets? Here, how will this one do?”
Rilla sat down at the piano, and presently their blended voices rang out in a curious little jig of a chorus neither of them ever heard before. They sang it half laughing, but the words were quite distinct out there in the shadows where listening ears were:
“Oh yes, my friend, there’s something more,
Something more than gold;
To know your sins are all forgiven
Is something more than gold!”
They sang it through several times, the last time almost gravely as the meaning of the words stole into their own hearts, and certainly if there were listeners outside, they would never forget those words, linked as they were to that unforgettable rhythm.
Then suddenly the rhythm changed; the voices grew more serious as they poured forth like a message:
“Nor silver nor gold hath obtained my redemption,
Nor riches of earth could have saved my poor soul;
The blood of the cross is my only foundation,
The death of my Savior now maketh me whole.
I am redeemed, but not with silver;
I am bought, but not with gold;
Bought with a price—the blood of Jesus,
Precious price of love untold.”
They sang for almost an hour, and the melodies linked to priceless words went out in the silent night to souls in the darkness—bitter, sin-laden souls. For Meachin Street had stopped fighting and cursing and was listening. Sodden hearts were suddenly arrested by strange new thoughts borne on the wings of song.
At last Mother Reed, soothed and somehow strangely comforted by hearing her children sing, herded them to bed. Tomorrow would be another day, but at least she could sleep tonight, and tomorrow there would be new strength.
So mother and daughter soon slept, but Thurlow lay and thought about that footprint and how he could guard his family and what he ought to do. Listening to every stealthy footstep, every stir of creature and snapping of twig, even almost hearing the courses of the stars on their mighty way through the ages, he slept almost none at all.
And tomorrow he was going to be a policeman!