Into Cornelia’s heart there flooded a tide of strength and joy surpassing anything she had ever known in pride of herself. Her brother, her brother was singing like that! He had overcome all obstacles, whatever they might have been, and got there in time! He was there! He had not failed! He was singing like a great singer.
Out at the curbstone beside the church sat huddled in a “borrowed” car, with a broken wind-shield, borrowed without the knowledge of the owner, three girls, frightened, furious, and overwhelmed with wonder. All during that stormy drive to the city they had screamed and reasoned and pommelled their captor in vain. He had paid no more heed to their furor than if they had been three gadflies sitting behind him. When one of them tried to climb into the front seat beside him, he swept her back with one blind motion and a threat to throw them all out into the road if they didn’t stop. They had never seen him like this. They subsided, and he had sat silent, immovable, driving like Jehu, until with a jerk he suddenly brought up at the church, and sprang out, vanishing into the darkness. And now this voice, this wonderful voice, piercing out into the night like the searching of God.
“Holy, holy, holy!” They listened awesomely. This was not the young man they knew, with whom they had rollicked and feasted and revelled. This was a new man. And this—this that he was voicing made them afraid. Holy, holy! It was a word that they hated. It seemed to search into their ways from the beginning. It made them aware of their coarseness and their vulgarity. It brought to their minds things that made their cheeks burn, and made them think of their mothers and retribution. It reminded them of the borrowed car, and the fact that they were alone in it, and that even now some one might be out in search of it.
“Holy, holy!” sang the voice, “Lord God of Hosts!” and, as if a searchlight from heaven had been turned upon their silly, weak young faces, they trembled, and one by one clambered out into the shadow silently, and slunk away on their little clinking high heels, hurriedly, almost stumbling. They were running away from that voice and from that word, “Holy, holy, holy!” They were gone, and the borrowed car stood there alone. Stood there when the people filed out from the church, still talking about the wonderful new tenor that “Miss Grace” had found; stood there when the janitor locked the door and turned out the lights and went home. Stood there all night silently, with a hovering watchman in the shadows waiting for some one to come; stood there till morning, when it was reported and taken back to its owner with a handkerchief and a cigarette and a package of chewing gum on its floor to help along the evidence against the two young prisoners who had been brought to the station-house the night before.
But the young man who had driven the car from the cross-roads, and who had held on to his glorious tenor through the closing chorus, rising like a touch of glory over the whole body of singers until the final note had died away exquisitely, had suddenly crumpled into a limp heap and slid down upon the stairs.
Some one slipped around from among the basses, and lifted him up; two tenors came to his assistance, and bore him to the choir room; and Grace with anxious face slipped from the organ-bench and followed as the sermon text was announced; and no one was the wiser. Cornelia in her secluded seat with her singing heart knew nothing of the commotion.
A doctor was summoned from the congregation and discovered a dislocated shoulder, a broken finger, and a bad cut on the leg which had been bleeding profusely. Carey’s shoe was soaked with blood. Carey, coming to, was much mortified over his collapse, looked up nervily, and explained that he had had a slight accident, but would be all right in a minute. He didn’t know what made him go off like that. Then he promptly went off again.
Maxwell and Harry from their vantage of the doorway had seen the sudden disappearance, and hurried round to the choir room. Now Maxwell explained briefly that Carey had “had a little trouble with a couple of roughs who were trying to get away with somebody’s car,” and must have been rather shaken up by the time he got to the church.
“He sang wonderfully,” said Grace in a low tone full of feeling; “I don’t believe I ever heard that solo done better even by a professional.”
“It certainly was great!” said Maxwell, and Harry slid to the outer door, and stood in the darkness, blinking with pride and muttering happily. “Aw, gee!”