The First Soprano Part 17

It was to be lamented that the present inc.u.mbent at St. John's had not met with the young man's very hearty favor. The freshly introduced intoning struck him humorously. He imitated it in ordinary remarks about the house.

"Where's--my--hat?" he inquired in a whining chant, after the manner of the unfortunate rector's plaintively intoned "Let us pray."

Adele, always alive to the ridiculous, laughed; but still she wished he would not be irreverent.

"The way we go through the service," said d.i.c.k, "is so as to relieve it of as much sense as possible. No wonder some of us turn out hypocrites. But you don't, Adele. However, I'll reserve my estimate of your case till we see how you hold out at your new gait."

So d.i.c.k watched the "new gait," and Adele prayed that it might be a walk worthy of the Lord.

Meantime Hubert was pursuing his study of divinity in a normal way--with an open Bible and the Spirit of the Author to interpret. He sought also the fellowship of His people and deep was his perplexity as he found into how many countless sects the "one body" had been divided.

Very contrary to the Bible it seemed, but very helplessly he stood before the fact that seemed as hopeless of remedy as of denial. What ought he, one unit among the whole, to do about it? Kindly people sought to draw him into their various fellowships, and he peered into their folds and sought to find the place where his Lord was most honored and His presence most manifest. He found old churches, great and cold, whose service moved with slumbrous calm, and his ardent soul was chilled. He found others where activity bristled and cheerfulness prevailed, but where the world held court as obvious as in the market square; and from these he turned away with a still sharper grief. He found other congregations built in strife and schism, but with some fragrance still of the name of Jesus Christ, and rejoiced that He was preached.

"'They feared the Lord and served their own G.o.ds,'" he said to himself, as almost everywhere he saw the strange mingling of worship of the true G.o.d with the too patent service of the G.o.ds of pleasure and of wealth.

He found little companies, gathered in protest from shameless worldliness or infidel denial of the Lord, and with them he had sympathy, but still looked hungrily for a fuller expression of the truth than they offered. He found himself in companies where correct, punctilious statements of the truth abounded, and where the most careful zeal sought to restore an apostolic order of worship. But he found that the statements grew dry and juiceless in their formal exactness, and that prescribed form could not insure the animating Spirit without which it was as useless as the phylacteries of the Pharisees. He concluded that truth was deeper and fresher than any definitions of it, as the fountain excels the cistern; and that life was sovereign over form, though in form it embody itself.

He found perfection nowhere. After a disappointing meeting, the climax of a series of experiences in which arguments from various schools of doctrine had jostled against each other, and the varying phases of practice, emotional, anti-emotional, informal and ritualistic, with the intervening shades of difference, had presented themselves, he stood in the veranda at home with Winifred and described to her the procession of rival claims which a divided church presents to a Christian man's adherence, and ended with the question:

"Where shall we find the truth, Winifred?"

"In Christ," she answered simply.

"You are right, wise little sister," he said admiringly. "And there we will look for it."

He turned from his quest for perfection in any detachment of the church and sought the place where G.o.d would have him, not alone for the green pasture to be found but for the testimony to be given. Deeper lessons were learned as time advanced--lessons of "grace" as well as "truth."

Keen discrimination was tempered by love toward that Body which, though distorted and maimed, was still beloved by her Lord, and though besieged by error was still "the pillar and ground of the truth."

CHAPTER XIV

A "WITLESS, WORTHLESS LAMB"

The air at Silverguile Lake did not altogether agree with Mrs. Gray.

Rheumatic damps rose from the water, and the mornings were chilly and uncomfortable. The inane round of dressing, eating, appearing in the veranda, taking the daily drive, and other mild etcetera, grew irksome; and, beyond all, the faces of the dear ones at home were longed for.

Winifred came for a few days, and then the place brightened like a cloudy day that surprises the world with sunshine at its close.

Mrs. Gray was far from well when the home journey was undertaken, and Winifred looked at her with apprehension. But they traveled comfortably and reached home in the evening where welcome waited. But an alarming chill overtook the mother before she had retired that night, and the doctor was hastily summoned. The chill was a harbinger of serious illness, and the cheerful house became shrouded in dread of coming sorrow. Winifred devoted herself eagerly to her mother, but professional skill was needed also. The telephone rang frequent calls from the office during the anxious days to inquire for the loved patient, and life for the time was enveloped in the one painful query: Will mother live?

The doctor gave sparing reports, but careful directions. Winifred moved about the house with a pale face and frightened eyes, until the doctor told her that she evidently needed his services also, and that she must not let her mother see her with that face. Then she fled to her room and poured out her pitiful need to G.o.d, and begged His grace for calm and cheerfulness. With unfailing faithfulness He gave her what she asked, and she went back to minister with Him at hand to help.

"Winnie, dear, is that you?" said a faint voice from the bed.

"Yes, mother."

"Come here, dear, let me look at you."

Winifred went and sat beside her where they could look into each other's faces.

"Dear, do you think I am very ill? Does the doctor say so?"

"He has not said much, mother. But he is taking every care."

"Yes, I see. What do you think, child?"

"I do not know, mother. But we hope you are getting on as well as possible."

"Winnie," said she again, and her voice came with difficulty, "I think I am very ill. I have had sickness before, but not like this. Things seem slipping away."

Winifred's eyes filled with tears, but she forced them back. "Do not think that, mother," she pleaded.

"They are all slipping away," insisted the sick woman. "Every one--father, Hubert, you--everyone--everything I know--all slipping away."

Winifred looked to her invisible Companion in an agony of entreaty for her mother. Presently Mrs. Gray's voice again arose plaintively from the pillow:

"I am afraid--I am afraid, Winnie. I don't know--the things ahead!

These,"--and her poor hands closed themselves over the counterpane as though they would try to hold the tangible, known things--"are slipping away, and I--am afraid."

"G.o.d never slips away," whispered Winifred.

"No?" queried the mother. "But I--can't--see Him! I don't--know Him."

So the secret, before unconfessed and unrealized, came out at last.

She did not know Him. The church, the service, the minister,--the external routine of a nominally Christian life, all was slipping away into a mist of past that could not be retained. And now the soul stood, a terror-stricken stranger, before the things not known.

"I am afraid," repeated the faint voice.

Winifred longed for words of comfort, but they did not seem at hand.

The white-robed nurse came into the room with a little air of professional authority. "I think our patient should not talk any more just now," she said, and Winifred retired.

She met Hubert in the hall and drew him to her own little sitting-room, where they pleaded with G.o.d together for the eternal comfort of the beloved sufferer.

Evening came and Winifred was again by her mother's side.

"Winifred," said the gentle voice, stronger to-night for the increased fever.

"Yes, dear mother?"

"Winnie, dear, would you be afraid if--if you were ill--like me?--if you were going to--"

"To die," she was about to say, but she could not speak the word. She shivered instead, as though a cold wind had struck her.

Winifred did not wait for the unwelcome word.

"No--I think not, mother," she said simply.