"Yes, ma'am," the woman said, "I see. I feel now as though I could love God real hard 'cause He's good to Tom. But Mrs. Ward, the preacher must be wonderful good, fer he can think God would send my Tom to hell, and yet he can love Him! I couldn't do it."
"Oh, he is good!" Helen cried, with a great leap of her heart.
The wind blew the powdered snow about, as she walked home in the cold white dusk, piling it in great drifts, or leaving a ridge of earth swept bare and clean. The blackened lumber-yards were quite deserted in the deepening chill which was felt as soon as the sun set; the melting snow on the hot, charred planks had frozen into long icicles, and as she stopped to look at the ruin one snapped, and fell with a splintering crash.
One of those strangely unsuggested remembrances flashed into her mind: the gleam of a dove's white wing against the burning blue of a July sky, the blaze of flowers in the rectory garden, and the subtle, penetrating fragrance of mignonette. Perhaps the contrast of the intense cold and the gathering night brought the scene before her; she sighed; if she and John could go away from this grief and misery and sin, which they seemed powerless to relieve, and from this hideous shadow of Calvinism!
"After all," she thought, hurrying along towards home and John, "Mrs. Davis is right,—it is hard to love Him. He does not give a chance to every one; none of us can escape the inevitable past. And that is as hard as to be punished unjustly. And there is no help for it all. Oh, where is God?"
Just as she left the lumber-yard district, she heard her name called, and saw Gifford Woodhouse striding towards her. "You have been to those poor Davises I suppose," he said, as he reached her side, and took her empty basket from her hand.
"Yes," she answered, sighing. "Oh, Gifford, how dreadful it all is,—the things these people say, and really believe!" Then she told him of Elder Dean, and a little of her talk with Mrs. Davis. Gifford listened, his face growing very grave.
"And that is their idea of God?" he said, as she finished. "Well, it is mine of the devil. But I can't help feeling sorry you spoke as you did to the elder."
"Why?" she asked.
"Well," he said, "to assert your opinion of the doctrine of eternal damnation as you did, considering your position, Helen, was scarcely wise."