"Now, that's about all. When you wish that you could pay this debt—which isn't any debt so far—you've paid it, so far as I'm concerned. It is the wish to pay your debts that amounts to moral principle—and to business success too—in this world.
"And so," he laughed again his great resounding laugh, and thrust out his hand toward her, "I reckon you can call yourself something of a business success tonight after all. Now go home, and see that you sleep."
CHAPTER XVII
AT CHURCH
That Sunday evening Aurora Lane sat alone in her dingy little home. The walls seemed to her close as those of any prison. She found about her nothing of comfort. For once the little white bedside, all her life her shrine, failed in its ministration. There rose in her heart a great vague hunger for gregarious worship—the sort which all these others had freely offered every week of all their lives—that same wish for gregarious worship on which are based all the churches, all the creeds, of all the world. As never in her life before Aurora felt now that she could no longer fight alone, in solitude—she needed something—she needed the sight of other faces, the touch of other hearts; needed the assemblage, the crowd—needed, in short, the world en masse, as we all do. She had lived without association and without sympathy too long. Now her starved nature at last rebelled.
So, having prayed faithfully, Aurora Lane rose not wholly comforted; and therefore she resolved to break the habit of her life, as she had lived it more than twenty years in this little town. In all that time she had not been within the door of any church, but now she felt that she must go—must be at least in part like to all these others on this evening of the Sabbath day.
The main note of such a community as Spring Valley is that of a resigned acceptance of life. This means a drab middle course, of small heroics, which yet does not debar from a quiet sympathy and mutual understanding. This in turn essentially implies some manner of religious belief, for the most part of the passive, un-investigative sort. Without doubt the church of this or that denomination—and in any such community there will be many—is the club and the court alike to those who maintain its beliefs—aye, and it is their hope and stay as well.
Aurora chose the largest church, where there was most apt to be the largest congregation. Passing there, she had heard the organ roll in its moving appeal. It seemed to her that she must hear music or she must starve, must die. The drain on her nature now had been so great that, much as every impulse drew her to yonder other edifice, the one with iron bars where lay her own son, a prisoner, she could not go there, could not see him again, until she herself had had restoration of some of the forces of her own life. She wanted music—she wanted light—she wanted the presence, close, near to her, of other human beings. Surely they must know—surely they too must some time have suffered, have grieved, have yearned.
The slow life of the little town, which the excitement of this extraordinary Sabbath had so largely diverted from its usual channels, now began to reassemble and to trickle toward the conventional meeting grounds. Those who had been delinquent at the morning services were at least tonight devout.