Held to Answer/Chapter 18
After parting from Bessie at her father's door, John spent twenty-four hours in dumb agony at his hotel, devoting much time to uncounted attempts to frame a letter to her. But the one which finally went by the hands of a messenger was a mere cry that broke out of his heart. All it brought back was an answering cry,—four pages with impetuous words rioting over them. There were splotches of ink where the pen had been urged too recklessly, and as John held it up to the electric light, he tried to imagine there were watery stains upon it.
That night Hampstead left Los Angeles for San Francisco and spent an aimless Saturday brooding upon the ocean beach, needing no sight of the jutting Cliff House rocks upon which his lips had first touched Bessie's to embitter his reflections. Sunday morning, however, as early as nine o'clock, found him threading the graveled paths of the little park in Encina, and taking his place upon the rustic bench across from the dingy chapel. The cleat remained on the door. God was still nailed up!
John could not help thinking that he, too, was rather nailed up. Drawing Bessie's last letter from his pocket, he held it very tenderly for a time in his hand, then opened it to the final paragraph, which his eyes read dimly through a mist that overspread his vision like a curtain of fog.
"I shall always love you, John," her pen had sobbed, "—always; or at least, it seems so now. But you have hurt me in what touches a woman nearest. I have tried to understand—I think I have forgiven—but that full confiding trust!—Oh, John!"
The letter didn't cut off hope exactly; but it didn't kindle any bonfires, either. As John read it, he felt forlorn and helpless, and perceived that he had made rather a mess of things generally.
And, in the meantime, there was absolutely nothing more important for him to do than to sit on the park bench before this wretched-looking, dishonored little church and watch to see whether any children came to Sunday school.
Yes,—two were coming now. One was a little girl of six or seven, in a smock immaculately white. She was bareheaded, but her flaxen locks were bound with a bright blue ribbon that just matched the blue of her eyes. Her stockings were white, and her shoes were patent leather and very shiny. She walked with precise, proud steps, and looked down occasionally at the glinting tips of her toes to make sure that they were still unspotted. Once she stopped and touched them daintily with the handkerchief she carried in her hand, and then glanced up and around swiftly with a guilty look.
By her side walked little brother. He might have been four. He might have been wearing his first pants; his feet might have been uncomfortable; the elastic cord on his hat might have been pinching his throat most irritatingly, and probably was; but for all of that he trudged along sturdily, as careful of his four-year-old dignity as his sister obviously was of her motherly office.
He stretched his legs, too, to take as long steps as she, which was not so difficult, because his sister minced her gait a little.
Together they swung around the corner, and their feet pattered on the board walk leading across the sod to the chapel. Involuntarily they stopped a moment where Elder Burbeck had borrowed the plank, then stepped over the hole and mounted with confident, straining steps to the platform. The sister was now a little in advance, one hand holding her brother's and lifting stoutly as he struggled to surmount the unnatural height.
But the door of the church was closed. This nonplussed the little lady for just a second, after which she thrust up her chubby hand and gave the knob a turn. The door did not respond. She rattled the knob protestingly, and then, looking higher, saw the plank nailed across.
At this the small miss stepped back confounded, to the accompaniment of childish murmurings. Little brother did not understand. He clamored to be admitted to his "Sunny Kool." The little woman tried again, but the door baffled her most indifferently. However, after a moment of wondering dismay, this tiny edition of the feminine retreated no farther than to turn and sit down upon the steps, first dusting them carefully, and inducing little brother to sit beside her. Strength had been baffled, but faith was still strong.
"The eternal woman!" commented John reverently. "So Mary waited at the tomb."
But other children were coming, and soon a fringe of little bodies was sitting around the platform, and soon a border of little feet decorated the second step, the girls' feet neatly, daintily composed; the boys' feet restless, clumsier, beating an insistent tattoo as they awaited the appearance of some grown-up who could admit them or explain.
"Teacher! Teacher!"
One little girl set up the shout, and like a bevy the smaller children swarmed across the street and into the park to meet a very slender girl, perhaps sixteen years of age, with her light brown hair in half a dozen long, rolling curls that, snared at the neck by a wide ribbon, hung half way down her back.
Attended eagerly by this childish court, the babble of their voices rising about her, the girl mounted the steps, stood a moment in confusion before the locked and barred door, then looked about her helplessly, almost as the children had done.
"This is my cue," John declared with decision, rising from his seat and crossing to the chapel.
"My name's Hampstead," he began, taking off his hat to the girl. "I belong to the First Church, Los Angeles."
"How do you do, Brother Hampstead," she responded, in a voice that expressed instant confidence, while her large eyes, blue as the sky, lighted with pleasure and relief. "I am Helen Plummer, teacher of the infant class."
"You seem to be embarrassed," John proceeded.
"Whatever shall I do?" confessed the young lady, looking at the barred door, at her charges about her, and at John.
John laid his hand upon the plank at the end where it projected beyond the edge of the little, coop-like vestibule, and gave it a tentative pull. It did not spring much. Burbeck's nails had been long, and he had driven them deep. But John was strong. He swung his weight upon the end of the plank and it gave a little. He swung harder, and it yielded more. Presently he heard a squeaking, protesting sound from the straining nails, and increased his efforts till the veins knotted on his forehead.
"Bet y' he can't," speculated an urchin whose chubby toes were frankly barefoot and energetically digging into the sod of the lawn.
"Bet yuh he will," instantly countered another, shifting his gum.
"Oh, I do hope you can!" sighed the fairy thing with the curls down her back and the eyes like the sky.
That settled it for John. This plank was coming off. Nevertheless, there was a pause while he mopped his brow and considered. The result of these considerations was to fall back for reinforcement on two cobbles of unequal size chosen from the gutter, the larger of which he used as a hammer while the smaller served as a wedge, till, with a final wrench, the plank came free.
But Elder Burbeck had locked the door.
"A hairpin?" queried John of the sky blue eyes.
"I have not come to hairpins yet," blushed the teacher of the infant class.
John remembered the buttonhook on his key ring, and after a few moments of vigorous attack with that humble instrument the bolt shot accommodatingly to one side and the door swung open.
"Thank you so much!" exclaimed the blue eyes, though the red lips of pliant sixteen said never a word, but framed themselves in a very pretty smile.
John acknowledged the smile with one of his broadest. At the same time, he reflected that Miss Helen's failure to regard as seriously unusual either the barred door or its violent opening was significant of the state to which affairs in the little church had come; and it was with a grim sense of duty well performed that the big man followed the trooping children into the chapel and looked about him.
The building was small, yet somehow it appeared larger inside than out. The utmost simplicity marked its furnishings. The seats were divided by two aisles into a central block of sittings and two side blocks. The pulpit was a mere elevated platform at one side, flanked by lower platforms, one of which supported a cabinet organ. The dull red carpet upon the floor was dreary looking; but the walls and ceilings were neatly white, giving a suggestion of lightness and cheer quite out of harmony with the circumstances under which John had entered it.
The twenty or more children massed themselves, as if by habit, upon the front seats, and presently, with Helen at the organ, Hampstead had them singing lustily one song after another, while the size of the audience increased by occasional stragglers until, during the fourth song, two women appeared, each rather breathless, and one with unmistakable evidences of having got hurriedly into her clothes. John felt the eyes of the women upon him suspiciously, and noticed that neither spoke to the other, and that they took seats on opposite sides of the church.
At the end of the song, he walked over to the older of the two ladies, who somehow had the look of a wife and mother in Israel, and said:
"My name's Hampstead,—First Church, Los Angeles."
"I'm Sister Nelson," replied the lady, a trifle stiffly. "I teach a class of boys. But I thought the church was closed till I heard the organ. Are you a minister?"
"Me? No!" And John smiled at the thought, but he also smiled engagingly. Mrs. Nelson instantly liked and accepted him and allowed her stiffness to melt somewhat.
"I just happened in," John explained, as he turned to cross toward the young lady on the other side, who appeared, he thought, to eye him rather more suspiciously after such cordial exchange with Mrs. Nelson.
"My name's Hampstead," he began. "First Church, Los Angeles. I just happened in."
"I'm Miss Armstrong," replied the lady, with conviction, as if it were something important to be Miss Armstrong. "I was teaching a class of girls before Brother Aleshire left; or rather, was driven away!" and the lady darted a look that ran across the little auditorium like a silver wire straight at the uncompromising figure of Sister Nelson. "I thought there wasn't to be any Sunday school until I heard the organ."
"Guess I'm responsible for that," replied John. "I just kind of butted in."
Miss Armstrong did not ask John if he were a minister. She knew it was unnecessary after he said "butted in." But she also felt the warmth of his engaging smile and yielded to it after a searching moment, for he really did look like a well-meaning young man.
Before the pulpit, and in front of the central block of chairs where the children were gathered, was a huge irregular patch in the carpet. This patch was about midway between the two outer plots of chair-backs, in the midst of one of which, like a solitary outpost, sat the watchful Mrs. Nelson, while Miss Armstrong performed grim sentinel duty in the other.
To this patch in the carpet, as to the security of neutral ground, John returned after establishing his identity and status with the two ladies, and from that safely aloof position, after a moment of hesitancy, ventured to announce:
"Since we seem somewhat disorganized this morning, I suggest that Sister Nelson take all the boys, and Sister Armstrong take all the girls, while Miss Helen will take the little folks, as usual."
It was evident from their respective expressions that Mrs. Nelson did not know about this idea, and that Miss Armstrong also had her doubts; but the children settled it. The tots rushed for the small platform on the left of the pulpit which had some kindergarten paraphernalia upon it, while the larger boys charged for Sister Nelson and began to arrange the loose chairs in a circle about her. The larger girls made the same sort of an advance upon Miss Armstrong.
Within five minutes, preliminaries were got out of the way, heads were ducked toward a common center, and there rose in the little church that low buzz of intense interest, possibly more apparent than real, which an old-fashioned Sunday school gives off at recitation period, and which is like no other sound in the world in its capacity to suggest the peaceful, bee-like hum of industry and contentment.
Standing meditatively in the center of the open space before the pulpit, thrilling with pleasure at the situation, feeling somehow that he had created it, John heard with apprehension a quick heavy step in the little entry, saw the swinging inside doors give back, and observed the stern, red face of Elder Burbeck confronting him across the backs of the middle bank of chairs.
The Elder had a fighting set to his jaw; he had his undertaker hat upon his head; and he glared at John accusingly as if he instantly connected him with the policy of the open door. But as if to make sure first just what mischief had resulted, Elder Burbeck's glance swept the room, taking in by turns Miss Armstrong with her girls, Sister Nelson with her boys, and Miss Helen with her kindergarteners.
As the Elder gazed, his expression changed perceptibly, and he reached up and took off his high hat, lowering it slowly, but reverently.
John, who had been standing perfectly still upon the patch, meek but unabashed, experienced an odd sensation as he witnessed this manœuvre. It was dramatic and as if some presence were in the room which the Elder had not expected to find there. Yet, notwithstanding this, the apostle of the status quo turned level, accusing eyes upon John across the tiers of chairs, and began to advance down the aisle upon the right where Sister Nelson had seated herself. John, at the same moment, began a strategic forward movement upon his own account, so that the two met midway.
"You broke open the house of the Lord," charged Elder Burbeck sternly.
"You nailed it up," rebutted John flatly, his features grave and his whole face clothed in a kind of dignity that to Elder Burbeck was as disconcerting as it was impressive.
The Elder opened his mouth to speak but closed it again without doing so. Something in the very atmosphere was a rebuke to him. Perhaps it was the presence of the Presence! He had indeed nailed up the house of the Lord! He thought he had done a righteous thing, but under this young man's eyes, burning with an odd spiritual light, before his calm, strong face, and in the presence of these children, the accusation smote the Elder deep. He began to suspect that he had done a doubtful act.
"Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins," piped a high voice sharply at his elbow, and Elder Burbeck started guiltily, as if his conscience had shouted the sentiment aloud. It was only one of Sister Nelson's boys singing out the text; nevertheless, the Elder was as shaken as if he had heard a voice from on high.
But at this juncture John Hampstead put out his hand cordially. Elder Burbeck took it—tentatively, almost grudgingly,—and was again dismayed to feel how strong that hand was and to observe how, without apparent effort, it shook him all over, as it had shaken him that day upon the walk outside. Yet the Elder mustered once more the spirit of protest.
"The church was closed by order of the District Evangelist," he urged, but his urging, even to himself, sounded strangely lacking in force.
"It was opened in the name of Him who said 'Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not,'"
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replied the interloper, quietly and emphatically, but not offensively.
In the meanwhile the subtle cordiality of John's manner did not abate but seemed rather to grow, for, still clinging to the Elder's hand, Hampstead walked with him back down the aisle to the open space before the pulpit. Burbeck felt himself strangely subdued. He was minded to rebel, to flame up; but somehow he couldn't. Yet Sister Nelson's eye was upon him, and it would imperil his own leadership to appear beaten by this mild-mannered young man who assumed so much so coolly and executed his assumptions so masterfully. The alternative strategy which suggested itself to the mind of the Elder was to take the lead in showing that he recognized the intrusion of Hampstead as somehow an intervention from which good might come. To make this strategy effective, however, action must be immediate; but the shrewd Elder was easily equal to that. Sniffing the air critically for a moment, he announced, loudly enough to be heard by all, even by Sister Nelson, busy with her boys:
"You need some windows open, Brother Hampstead! You go on with your superintending; I'll attend to that myself."
Immediately the Elder laid his tall hat upon the pulpit steps and busied himself with opening the windows at the top.
John watched him with carefully concealed amazement, until an unmistakable awe settled in upon him; for here was obviously the exhibition of a mystery,—the demonstration of a power within him not his own. Here was something he had not done; yet which had been done through him, through the presence of the Presence.
As the lesson hour proceeded, a trickling stream of adults began to filter in. Their attitude, any more than Burbeck's had been, was not that of people who enter a house of worship. Surprise, excitement, conflict was written on their faces. They took seats in one side section with Elder Burbeck and Miss Nelson, or upon the other side with Miss Armstrong; and then, between fierce looks across the abyss of chair-backs at the "disturbing element,"—the other side in a church quarrel is always that,—they bent a curious watchful eye on Hampstead.
At first the notes of the organ had notified those in the immediate neighborhood that the house of God was no longer nailed up. Members of each party, fearful that the other might gain an advantage, began at once to spread the news in person and by telephone, so that now all over Encina women were struggling with hooks and eyes and curling irons, and men were abandoning Sunday papers and slippers on shady porches, shaving, dressing, and rushing in hot haste to the battle line.
When the children filed out, the opposing groups of adults remained buzzing among themselves like angry hornets, but with no more communication between the two ranks than bitter looks afforded.
John, extremely desirous of getting well out of the zone of hostilities, was actually afraid to leave these belligerent Christians alone together. He thought they might break into pitched battle; the women might pull hair, the men swing chairs upon each other's heads. His fears were abruptly heightened by a series of violent bumps on the steps outside, followed by a trundling sound in the vestibule as if a cannon were being unlimbered. Instantly, too, every face in the little chapel turned at the ominous sounds, but John was puzzled to observe that the expression of even the bitterest was softened at the prospect.
This was explained in part when there appeared through the swinging inner doors not the muzzle of a fieldpiece, but a lady in a wheel chair, who, though her dark hair had begun to silver, was dressed in youthful white and had about her the air of one who refused to allow mere invalidism to triumph over the stoutness of her spirit.
Her vehicle was propelled by a solemn looking Japanese, and as if by long understanding, one man slipped forward immediately from each faction, and the two made a way among the chairs for the Oriental to roll his charge to the exact center of the unoccupied middle bank of sittings.
Bestowing on each helper a look of gratitude from her dark eyes, which were large and luminous, the lady sent a benignant smile before her round the church like one whose presence sweetens all about it. Evidently she was one member of the congregation who observed a scrupulous neutrality while holding the affection and regard of all.
"The Angel of the Chair!" murmured Miss Plummer in John's ear, as she passed to a seat with Miss Armstrong.
John looked again at the form in the chair, so frail and orchid-like, with its delicately chiseled face and its expression of courageous spirituality. Remembering how the features of all had softened at the sound of the wheels, he felt that she well deserved the title. This impression of her saintly character was somehow heightened by a chain of large jet beads ending in a cross of the same material, which the whiteness of the gown outlined sharply upon her breast; so that John found himself instinctively leaning upon her as a possible source of inspiration and relief.
From her position of carefully chosen neutrality, the Angel of the Chair immediately beckoned Miss Armstrong to her from one side and Elder Burbeck from the other. Each approached, without in any way recognizing the presence of the other; and Miss Armstrong was apparently asked to detail what had happened, Burbeck's part, it would seem, being to amend if the narrative did his faction less than justice.
The story finished, and the Elder nodding his assent to it, the Angel of the Chair dismissed her informants and turned a welcoming glance on John, who advanced with extended hand, but judging that his formula of introduction was now unnecessary.
"I am Mrs. Burbeck," the lady said pleasantly in a rich contralto voice.
Hampstead all but gasped. This delicate, spirituelle creature that hard, red-faced partisan's wife! It seemed impossible.
But Mrs. Burbeck was composedly taking from her lap a twist of tissue paper from which she unrolled a simple boutonniere, consisting of one very large, very corrugated and very fragrant rose geranium leaf, upon which a perfect white carnation had been laid.
"Do you know, Mr. Hampstead," she went on placidly, "what I am going to do?" and then, as John looked his disclaimer, continued: "I have always been allowed the privilege of bringing a flower for the minister's buttonhole. Brother Ingram would never take his flower from any one else. When the rain kept me away, he would not wear a flower at all. Brother Aleshire also took his flower from me."
"But," protested John, in sudden alarm, "I am not a minister at all, you know. I just happened in, and I assure you that all I am thinking of now is a way to happen out."
The Angel, it appeared, was a woman with deeps of calm strength in her.
"You have been a real minister in what you have done this morning," she said contentedly, entirely undisturbed by John's embarrassed frankness.
"But how am I going to get out from under?" gasped the young man, feeling more and more that he could trust this woman.
The Angel of the Chair smiled inspiringly.
"The Scripture has no rule for getting out from under," she suggested quietly, "but there is something about not letting go of the plow once you have grasped the handles."
The Angel was looking straight up at John now, searching his eyes for a moment, then adding significantly:
"I do not think you are a quitting sort of person."
A quitting sort! John could have blessed this woman. In two sentences she had felt her way to the principle he had tried to make the very center of his character,—loyalty to duty and everlasting persistence. Some people rather thought he was a quitting sort. John knew he was not, and to prove it bent till his buttonhole was in easy reach of the hands uplifted with the flower.
"And what," he asked, "does the minister do when he has received this decoration from the Angel of the Chair?"
It was Mrs. Burbeck's turn to feel a flush of pleasure at this appellation from a stranger.
"Why," she smiled, her large eyes lighting persuasively, "he goes into the pulpit and announces a hymn."
"Which I am not going to do," declared John, "because I should not know what to do next."
"In that hour it shall be given you," quoted the lady.
Now it was very strange, but when Mrs. Burbeck quoted this, it did not seem like an appeal to faith at all, but the simple statement of a fact. It chimed in, too, with that odd suggestion of the presence of the Presence, which had come to John a while ago.
Feeling thereby unaccountably stronger, and endued with a sort of moral authority as if he had just taken Holy Orders because of the carnation which bloomed so chastely white upon his breast, John squared his shoulders and mounted into the pulpit. There was something that God wanted to say to these people, and he accepted the situation as an obvious call to him to say it, but when he essayed to speak, awe came upon him, as it had a while before.
"Brethren," he confessed humbly, in a voice barely audible to all, "I am not a preacher. I haven't got any text, and I don't know what to say, except just perhaps to tell you how I happened to be here this morning."
Then he told them simply and unaffectedly but with unconscious eloquence how he happened to see the church nailed up and how it sounded like the echo of the blows upon the cross; how, this morning, with a sad ache in his own heart, the thought of the faith of little children disturbed by that brutal plank upon the door had brought him all the way over here from his home in San Francisco and led him to do what he had done. He even told them of his meditative comparison between the houses of people that looked so happy and the house of God that looked so unhappy.
But while John was relating this modestly, yet with some of the fervor of unction and some comfortable degree of self-forgetfulness, he was interrupted by a sound like a sob, and looking down beyond Elder Burbeck to where Sister Nelson sat, he was surprised to see a handkerchief before her eyes and her shoulders trembling. Over on the other side, too, handkerchiefs were out, so that John suddenly realized that he or somebody had touched something.
Who had done it? What had caused it? Once more there came to the young man that eerie consciousness of a power within him not himself, and the feeling frightened him.
"That's all I have to say, brethren," he declared abruptly, his voice growing suddenly hollow. "I am terrified. I want to get away!"
Without even the singing of a hymn, John lifted his hand, bowed his head, and murmured something that was to pass for a benediction.