That Printer of Udell's: A Story of the Middle West

by Harold Bell Wright

"You must let me help you in this. Thank God, I can do it now. Prove to me that you are still my friend, by letting me make this investment for Christ. Will you?"

The next day they bade good-bye to the sturdy soldiers of the cross who had been so true to them, and started on their westward journey.

Dick saw Amy safe in her new home, and then with a promise that she would write to him regularly, and an agreement that he would send her letters and papers addressed to the people with whom she lived, he left her; satisfied that she was in kind hands, and that a new life was open before her.

But when Dick was once more aboard the train, alone with his thoughts, without the anxiety for Amy's immediate welfare upon his mind, the struggle of his life began. He loved Amy dearly; had loved her almost from the moment she came into George Udell's printing office three years ago; loved her in spite of the difference in their position, when he was only a tramp and she was the favored daughter of wealth; when he was an unbeliever and she was a worker in the church; loved her when he saw her losing her hold on the higher life and drifting with the current; loved her when she left home, and as he thought, honor behind. And he was forced to confess, in his own heart, that he loved her yet, in spite of the fact that their positions were reversed; that he was an honored gentleman, respected and trusted by all, while she, in the eyes of the world, was a fallen woman with no friend but himself.

But what of the future? Dick's dreams had always been that he would win such a position in the world as would enable him, with confidence, to ask her to share his life. But always there had been the feeling that he never could be worthy. And with the dark picture of his own past before him, he knew he had no right to think of her as his wife. But now there was no question as to his position. But what of hers? Could he think of taking for a wife, one whom he had seen in that house at Cleveland? On the one hand, his love plead for her; on the other, the horror of her life argued against it. Again his sense of justice plead, and his own life came before him like a horrid vision as it had done that morning when he learned of his father's death. He saw his childhood home, smelt the odor of the fragrant pines upon the hills, and heard the murmur of the river running past the cabin. Again he heard his drunken father cursing in his sleep, and caught the whisper of his mother's dying prayer; and again he crept stealthily out of the cabin into the glory of the morning, with a lean hound his only companion.

Slowly and painfully he traced his way along the road of memory, recalling every place where he had advanced; every place where he had fallen; going step by step from the innocence of boyhood to the awful knowledge of the man of the world. He had fought, had fallen, had conquered and risen again; always advancing toward the light, but always bearing on his garment the smell of the fire, and upon his hands the stain of the pitch. And now, because he was safe at last and could look back upon those things, should he condemn another? Would not Amy also conquer, and when she had conquered, by what right could he demand in her that which he had not in himself? Christ would as freely welcome her as He had welcomed him. Christianity held out as many glorious hopes for her as for him. Her past might be past as well as his. Why should he not shut the door upon it forever, and live only in the present and future? And then his mind fell to picturing what that future, with Amy by his side, might be. They were equals now, before God and their own consciences. What should he care for the world?

And so the fight went on in the battle-ground of his inner life, until the whistle blew a long blast for the station, and looking from the window of the car, he saw the smelter smoke and dust of Boyd City.

CHAPTER XXV

John Barton and his wife, Anna, with whom Amy was to make her home for a while, could fully sympathize with the girl in her sad position, though one would never dream that the quiet, reserved John knew more of life than of his pigs and cattle, or that his jolly-faced, motherly companion had ever been beyond the quiet fields that surrounded her simple dwelling. Years before, they had been rescued from the world in which Amy had so nearly perished, by the same kind hand that had been stretched out to her, the Salvation Army; and now well on in middle life, happy and prosperous, they showed scarce a trace of the trouble that had driven them to labor on a farm. As hired help, they had gained their experience, and by ceaseless industry and careful economy, had at last come to own the place where they now lived. With no child of her own, Mrs. Barton took a mother's place in Amy's life from the first, and was very patient with the girl who had never been taught to do the simplest household task. Amy returned the loving kindness full measure, and, determined to be a help to those who so much helped her, advanced rapidly in the knowledge of her homely duties. Dressed in the plain working garb of a farm girl, with arms bare and face flushed by the heat of the kitchen, one would scarcely have recognized in her the beautiful young woman who moved with Boyd City's society leaders, or the brilliant novice who stood hesitating at the entrance to a life of sin in Madam's wine-rooms; and certainly, one would never have classed the bright eyes, plump cheeks, and well-rounded figure, with the frightened, starving, haggard thing that roamed about the streets of Cleveland a few short months before.

But great as was the change in Amy's outward appearance, the change within was even greater. She was no longer the thoughtless, proud, pleasure-loving belle that her parents had trained; nor was she the hard, reckless, hopeless creature that the world had made. But she was a woman now, with a true woman's interest and purpose in life. The shallow brilliance of the society girl had given place to thoughtful earnestness, and the dreary sadness of the outcast had changed to bright hopefulness.