Page:Anne's house of dreams (1920 Canada).djvu/254

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
244
ANNE’S HOUSE OF DREAMS

I went to Mr. Leavitt, our minister then, and told him if he didn’t make Fiske stop that I’d just rise up the next night and throw my hymn book at him when he mentioned that ‘beautiful but unrepentant young woman.’ I’d have done it too, believe me. Mr. Leavitt did put a stop to it, but Fiske kept on with his meetings until Charley Douglas put an end to his career in the Glen. Mrs. Charley had been out in California all winter. She’d been real melancholy in the fall—religious melancholy—it ran in her family. Her father worried so much over believing that he had committed the unpardonable sin that he died in the asylum. So when Rose Douglas got that way Charley packed her off to visit her sister in Los Angeles. She got perfectly well and came home just when the Fiske revival was in full swing. She stepped off the train at the Glen, real smiling and chipper, and the first thing she saw staring her in the face on the black, gable-end of the freight shed, was the question, in big white letters, two feet high, ‘Whither goest thou—to heaven or hell?’ That had been one of Fiske’s ideas, and he had got Henry Hammond to paint it. Rose just gave a shriek and fainted; and when they got her home she was worse than ever. Charley Douglas went to Mr. Leavitt and told him that every Douglas would leave the church if Fiske was kept there any longer. Mr. Leavitt had to give in, for the Douglases paid half his salary, so Fiske departed, and we had to depend on our Bibles once more