II
As the congregation assembled Grace yielded herself to the spell of the organ, whose inspiring strains gave wings to her imagination. Always impressionable, she felt that she had brought her soul humbled and chastened into the sanctuary. Here were the evidences of those more excellent things that had been pointed out to her from her earliest youth. The service opened spiritedly with the singing of a familiar hymn which touched chords in her heart that had long been silent. She joined in the singing and in the responsive reading of a selection of the Psalms. She had read somewhere that the church, that Christianity indeed, was losing its hold upon the mind and the conscience of mankind. But this church was filled; many men and women must still be finding a tangible help in the precepts and example of Jesus.
Ethel, sitting beside her, certainly found here something that brought her back Sunday after Sunday, and made her a zealous helper in the church activities. Bigoted and intolerant, unkind and ungenerous as Ethel was, there was something in her devotion to the church that set her a little apart, spoke for something fine in her, that for the moment caused Grace a twinge of envy. In her early youth she had “joined” the West End church that her mother attended; but before she left high school the connection had ceased to interest her. Dr. Ridgley’s congregation was composed largely of the prosperous and well-to-do. Did these people about her really order their lives in keeping with the teachings of Jesus? Was the Christian life a possible thing? Were these women in their smart raiment really capable of living in love and charity with their neighbors, eager to help, to serve, to save? Absorbed in her own thoughts she missed the text; found herself studying the minister, a young man of quiet manner and pleasing voice. Then detached sentences arrested her truant thoughts, and soon she was giving his utterances her complete attention.
... “Leaving God out of the question,” he was saying, “what excuse have we to offer ourselves if we fail to do what we know to be right? We must either confess to a weakness in our own fibre, or lay the burden on some one else. We must be either captain or slave.... We hear much about the changed spirit of the time. It is said that the old barricades no longer shield us from evil; that the checks upon our moral natures are broken down; that many of the old principles of uprightness and decent living have been superseded by something new, which makes it possible for us to do very much as we please without harm to our souls. Let us not be deceived by such reasoning. There’s altogether too much talk about the changes that are going on. There are no new temptations; they merely wear a new guise. The soul and its needs do not change; the God who ever lives and loves does not change.... There’s a limit upon our capacity for self-deception. We may think we are free, but at a certain point we find that after all we are the prisoners of conscience.
“The business of life is a series of transactions between the individual soul and God. We can change that relationship only by our own folly. We can deceive ourselves with excuses; but the test of an excuse is whether it will pass muster with God. God is not mocked; we can’t ‘just get by’ with God. We may be sure that we are pretty close to a realization of the Christian life when we feel that we have an excuse for any sin or failure that we dare breathe into a prayer. There’s hope for all of us as long as our sins are such that we’re not ashamed to carry them to God.... Let us live on good terms with ourselves first of all and with God be the rest. Let us keep in harmony with that power above us and beyond us which in all ages has made for righteousness.”...
The minister was uttering clearly and forcibly the thoughts that had been creeping through her own mind like tired heralds feebly crying warning to a threatened fortress. Captain or slave, that was the question. She had told Trenton that she was afraid of the answers to vexed problems of life and conduct. She saw now the cowardice of this. Her intelligence she knew to be above the average, and her conscience had within twenty-four hours proved itself to be uncomfortably sensitive and vigilant. There might be breaks in the old moral barriers but if this were really true it would be necessary for her to stumble over the debris to gain the inviting freedom of the territory beyond. No; there would be no excuse for her if she failed to fashion something fine and noble of her life.
In the vestibule Ethel introduced her to the minister, who greeted her warmly and praised Ethel; she was one of his standbys he said. While he and Ethel were conferring about some matter connected with the young people’s society Grace was accosted by a lady whom she identified at once as her first customer at Shipley’s.
“Do I know you or not?” demanded Miss Reynolds pleasantly. “Hats make such a difference, but I thought I recognized you. I’ve been away so many years that I look twice at every one I meet. I was caught in England by the war and just stayed on. It gives you a queer feeling to find yourself a stranger in your native town. It was silly of me to stay away so long. Well, how are things going with you?”
“Just fine,” Grace answered, noting that Miss Reynolds wore one of the suits she had sold her, and looked very well in it.
The old lady (the phrase was ridiculous in the case of one so alert and spirited) caught the glance; indeed nothing escaped the bright eyes behind Beulah Reynolds’ spectacles. She bent toward Grace and whispered: “This suit’s very satisfactory!” And then: “Well, we’ve caught each other in a good place. My grandfather was one of the founders of this church, so I dropped in to have a look. Haven’t seen more than a dozen people I used to know. There was a good deal of sense in that sermon; the best I’ve heard in years. They don’t scatter fire and brimstone the way they used to.”
One would have thought from her manner that she was enormously relieved to find that fire and brimstone had been abandoned as a stimulus to the Christian life.
“I’m not a member,” said Grace, “but my sister is. I never heard Dr. Ridgley before. I liked his sermon; I think I needed it.”
Grace was smiling but something a little wistful in her tone caused Miss Reynolds to regard her with keen scrutiny.
“Do you know, you’ve come into my mind frequently since our meeting at the store? I’ve thought of you—uncommercially, I mean, if that’s the way to put it! I’d like to know you better.”
“Oh, thank you, Miss Reynolds; I’ve thought of you, too, and have hoped you’d come into Shipley’s again.”
“Oh, clothes don’t interest me a particle; I may not visit Shipley’s again for years! But that doesn’t mean I shan’t see you. I wonder if you’d come to my house some evening for dinner—just ourselves. Would that bore you?”
“It certainly wouldn’t!” Grace responded smilingly.
“The sooner the better then! Tomorrow evening shall we say? Don’t think of dressing. Come direct from your work. Here’s my address on this card. I’ll send my motor for you.”
“Please don’t trouble to do that! I can easily come out on the street-car.”
“Suit yourself. It’s almost like kidnapping and—it just occurs to me that I don’t really know your name!” Her ignorance of Grace’s name greatly amused Miss Reynolds. “For all you know this might be a scheme to snare you to my house and murder you!”
“I’ll cheerfully take the chance!” laughed Grace, and gave her name. The minister had now finished with Ethel, and Grace introduced her sister to Miss Reynolds, who did not, however, include Ethel in her invitation to dinner.
“She charmingly eccentric,” Ethel remarked as Miss Reynolds turned away. “And awfully rich; one of the richest woman taxpayers in the state.”
“Yes; I understand she is,” said Grace without enthusiasm. “But we needn’t hold that against her.” And then, recalling Ethel’s complacent tone in mentioning any social recognition by her church friends, Grace remarked carelessly, “She’s invited me to dine with her tomorrow night. I’m to be the only guest. She seems to have a crush on me!”
At the midday dinner Ethel disclosed Miss Reynolds’ partiality for Grace with all impressiveness.
“Why, Grace!” exclaimed Mrs. Durland, “do you fully appreciate what that means?”
“It means that a very nice lady has invited me to share her dinner,” Grace answered.
“I hope you realize,” said Ethel, “what a great compliment that is. Why, she can do worlds for you!”
“Here’s hoping she keeps a good cook!” Grace retorted, irritated that they were attributing so much importance to what she preferred to look upon as no more than an act of spontaneous kindness in a generous hearted woman.
“Miss Reynolds represents the old conservative element here,” Mrs. Durland remarked in a tone that implied her deep reverence for that element of the population—“the people who always stood for the best things of life. Her father was a colonel in the Civil War. They always had money. A woman like that can make herself felt. Now that she’s back, I hope she’ll see that she has a work to do. She has no ties and with her position and wealth she can make herself a power for good in checking the evil tendencies so apparent in our city.”
“She’s so quaint; so deliciously old-fashioned,” added Ethel, “and you can see from her clothes that she’s an independent character. I’m going to ask Dr. Ridgely to invite her to take the chairmanship of our girl’s club committee.”
“That would be splendid, Ethel,” exclaimed Mrs. Durland, “perhaps you could say a word to her about it, Grace. You know better than Ethel the dangers and temptations of the girl wage-earner.”
“I don’t know why I should,” Grace replied. “Please don’t talk to me as though I had a monopoly of all the wickedness in the world.”
“Grace, dear, I didn’t mean——”
“All right, mother. But I have my feelings, you know.”
“The old Reynolds house on Meridian Street has been turned into a garage,” said Ethel; “it’s too bad those old homes had to go. Miss Reynolds has bought a house not far from where Bob Cummings built.”
Any mention of the Cummingses, no matter how inadvertent, inevitably precipitated a discussion of that family from some angle. Mrs. Durland said for the hundredth time that they didn’t deserve their prosperity; she doubted very much whether they were happy.
“Bob’s the best one of the family,” she continued. “Tom and Merwin haven’t amounted to anything and they never will. It must have been a blow to the family when Merwin married a girl who was nobody, or worse. She worked in some automobile office.”
Ethel challenged the statement that the girl Merwin Cummings married worked in an automobile office. It was a railroad office, and though it didn’t matter particularly with which method of transportation the young woman was identified before her marriage, Mrs. Durland and Ethel debated the question for several minutes. Mrs. Durland had only heard somewhere that Mrs. Merwin Cummings had been a stenographer for an automobile agent while Ethel was positive that a railroad office had been the scene of the girl’s labors, her authority being another girl who worked in the same place.
“Jessie didn’t speak any too highly of her,” Ethel added; “not that there was anything really wrong with the girl. She ran around a good deal, and usually had two or three men on the string.”
“A good many very nice girls keep two or three men on the string,” said Grace. “I don’t see that there’s anything so terrible in that.”