In League with Israel Part 15

"Yes, something like it," she answered. "She is a deaconess. There is this difference. They take no vows of perpetual service to the order, but their lives are as entirely consecrated to their work as though they had 'taken the veil,' as the nuns call it. This friend of mine who was just here, is a visiting deaconess. She goes about doing good in the Master's own way, to rich and poor alike. She came in just now to report a case of dest.i.tution she had discovered. I am chairman of the Mercy and Help Department in our League."

"Is that all they do?" asked David.

"All!" repeated Bethany. "You should see the Deaconess Home on Clark Street. They have a hospital there, and a Kitchen-garten. It is the work of some of these women to gather in all the poor, neglected girls they can find. They make it so very attractive that the poor children are taught to be respectable little housekeepers, without suspecting that the music and games are really lessons. Homes that could be reached in no other way have some wonderful changes wrought in them."

"You have so many different organizations in your Church," said David.

"Seems to me I am always hearing of a new one. There is an old saying, 'Too many cooks spoil the broth.' Did you never prove the truth of that?"

"Now, that's one beauty of Methodism," exclaimed Bethany. "The little wheels all fit into the big one like so many cogs, and all help each other. For instance, here is the deaconess work. It goes hand in hand with the League, only reaching out farther, with our motto of 'Lift Up,'

for they have an 'open sesame' that unbars all avenues to them. Of all hard, self-sacrificing lives, it seems to me a nurse deaconess has the hardest. She goes only into homes unable to pay for such services, and whatever there is to do in the way of nursing, or of cleansing these poverty-stricken homes, she does unflinchingly."

"The reason I asked," answered David, "is that one day last week I went down to that terrible quarter of the city near the lower wharves. I wanted to find a man who I knew would be a valuable witness in the Dartmon murder case. I had been told that the only time to find him would be before six o'clock, as he was a deckhand on one of the early boats. I had been directed to a laundry-office in a row of rotten old tenements near the river. I found the room used as an office was down in a damp bas.e.m.e.nt. It was about half-past five when I reached there. I went down the rickety old stairs and knocked several times. You can imagine my surprise when the door was opened by a refined-looking woman, in just such a costume as your friend wore, except, of course, the little bonnet. When I told her my errand, she asked me to step inside a moment. The smell of sewer-gas almost stifled me at first. There was a narrow counter where a few bundles were lying, still uncalled for. I learned afterward, that the laundry had failed, and these were left to await claimants. There was a calico curtain stretched across the room to form a part.i.tion. She drew it aside, and motioned me to look in. There was a table, two chairs, a gasoline stove, and an old bed. Lying across the foot of the bed, as if utterly worn-out with weariness and sorrow, lay a young girl heavily sleeping. A baby, only a few months old, was lying among the pillows, as white and still as if it were dead. The woman dropped the curtain with a shudder. 'It is the poor girl's husband you are looking for,' she said. 'He is a rough, drunken fellow, and has been away for days, n.o.body knows where. The baby is dying. I was called here at three o'clock this morning. A physician came for me, but he said it could not live many hours. O, it was awful! The c.o.c.kroaches swarmed all over the floor, and the rats were so bad they fairly ran over our feet. The poor girl sank in a heavy stupor soon after I came, from sheer exhaustion. There is nothing to eat in the house, and the milk I brought with me for the baby has soured. It seems a dreadful thing to say, but I dare not leave the baby while she is asleep long enough to get anything--on account of the rats.' Of course I went out and got the things she needed. Then there was nothing more I could do, she said. The wretched poverty of the scene, and the woman's bravery, have been in my thoughts ever since."

"I heard of that case yesterday," Bethany said, when he had finished. "I know the nurse, Belle Carleton. The baby died, and they took the mother to the Deaconess Hospital. She has typhoid fever. Belle told me of another experience she had. Her life is full of them. She was sent to a family where drunkenness was the cause of the poverty. The man had not had steady work for a year, because he was never sober more than a few days at a time. They lived in three rooms in the rear bas.e.m.e.nt of a large tenement-house. Belle said, when she opened the door of the first room, it seemed the most forlorn place she had ever seen. There was a table piled full of dirty dishes, and a cooking-stove covered with ashes, on which stood a wash-boiler filled with half-washed clothes. The floor looked as if it had never known the touch of a broom. The odor of the boiling suds was sickening. A slatternly, half-grown girl, one of the neighbors, stood beside a leaky tub, was.h.i.+ng as best she knew how.

Four dirty, half-starved children were playing on the bare floor. Their mother was sick in the next room. I couldn't begin to repeat Belle's description of that bedroom, it was so filthy and infested with vermin.

She said, when she saw all that must be done, that repulsive creature bathed, the dishes washed, and the floor scrubbed, a great loathing came over her. She felt that she could not possibly touch a thing in the room. She wanted to turn and run away from it all. I said to her, 'O, Belle, how could you force yourself to do such repulsive things?'"

"What did she say?" exclaimed Herschel.

Bethany's face reflected some of the tenderness that must have shone in Belle Carleton's, as she repeated her answer softly, "For Jesus' sake!"

There was a long pause, which Herschel broke by saying: "And she staid there, I suppose, forced her shrinking hands into contact with what she despised, did the most menial services, from a sense of duty to a man whom she had never seen, who died centuries ago? Miss Hallam, how could she? I find it very hard to understand."

"No, not from a sense of duty," corrected Bethany, "so much as love."

"Well, for love then. What was there in this man of Nazareth to inspire such devotion after such a lapse of time? I understand how one might admire his ethical teaching, how one might even try to embody his precepts in a code to live by; but how he can inspire such sublime annihilation of self, surpa.s.ses my comprehension. He was no greater lawgiver than Moses, yet who makes such sacrifices for the love of Moses? Peter suffered martyrdom, and Paul; yet who is ready to lay down his life cheerfully and say, 'I do it for the sake of Peter--or Paul?'"

"Mr. Herschel," said Bethany, looking up at him wistfully, "don't you see that it is no mere man who exercises such power; that he must be what he claimed--one with the Father?"

Cragmore's pa.s.sionate exclamation that day on the train came back to him: "O, my friend, if you could only see my Savior as he has been revealed to me!"

Then he seemed to hear Lessing's voice as they paced back and forth in front of the tent, arm in arm in the darkness.

"Of a truth you can not understand these things, unless you be born again--be born of the Spirit, into a realm of spiritual knowledge you have never yet even dreamed of. Winged life is latent in the worm, even while it has no conception of any existence higher than the cabbage-leaf it crawls upon. But how is it possible for it to conceive of flight until it has pa.s.sed through some change that bursts the chrysalis and provides the wings?"

The silence was growing oppressive. David shook his head, rose, and slowly walked out of the room.

"Sister," said Jack, a few days after, as she wheeled him homeward from the office at noon-time, "Mr. Herschel keeps teasing me all the time about something I said once about preaching to the Jews. He brings it up so often, that if he doesn't look out I'll begin on him sure enough."

Whatever answer Bethany might have made was interrupted by Miss Caroline, who met them as they turned a corner.

"Do tell!" she exclaimed in surprise. "You were in my mind just this minute. I wondered if I might not chance to meet you."

"Where have you been, Aunt Carrie?" asked Jack, seeing that she carried several small parcels.

"Shopping," she said. "Just think of it! Caroline Courtney actually out shopping in the dry-goods stores."

"What's the occasion?" asked Bethany. "It must be something important. I can't remember that you have done such a thing before since I have known you. Have you been invited to a ball, a wedding, or a wake?"

Miss Caroline beamed on them through her spectacles. "Really, my dears, that is just what I would like to know myself. That's why I had to make these purchases. Your cousin Ray came in this morning, just after you had gone, to invite us all to go to her house at half-past six this evening. She wouldn't tell us what sort of an occasion she was planning, only that it was a surprise for everybody, Mr. Marion most of all. He has been gone a week on a business trip, but will get home to-night at six. Sister and I have been trying to think what kind of an occasion it could be. I know it isn't their wedding anniversary, nor her birthday.

Maybe it is his. So you see we couldn't decide just how we ought to dress--whether to wear our very best dove-colored silks and point lace, or the black crepon dresses we have had two seasons. Sister absolutely refuses to carry her elegant fan that she got in Brussels, although I want very much to take mine, especially if we wear the gray dresses. My second best is broken, and of course we wouldn't want to carry a palm-leaf. There was no other way but to take the second best fan down and match it. Then she had lost one of the bows of ribbon that was on her gray dress, and I had to match that, in case we decided to wear the grays. Here I have spent the whole morning over my fan and her ribbon."

"Dear me!" said Jack. "Why don't you carry your Brussels fan and wear your gray dress, and let her wear her black dress and take the kind of fan she wanted?"

"O, my child!" exclaimed Miss Caroline, "Neither of us would have taken a mite of comfort so. You don't understand how it feels when there are two of you. When you have spent--well, a great many years, in having things alike, you don't feel comfortable unless you are in pairs."

It was arranged that Jack should not go back to the office that afternoon. The sisters volunteered to take him with them.

Bethany hurried through her work, but it seemed to her she had never had so many interruptions, or so much to do.

It was after six when she closed her desk. Mr. Edmunds noticed the tired look on her flushed face, and said:

"Miss Hallam, my carriage is waiting down stairs. I have to stay here some time longer to meet a man who is late in keeping his engagement.

Jerry may as well take you home while he is waiting." He went down on the elevator with her, and handed her into the carriage.

"Better stay out in the fresh air a little before you start home," he said, kindly. "It will do you good."

Bethany sank back gratefully among the cus.h.i.+ons. Jerry had been her father's coachman at one time. He grinned from ear to ear as she took her seat.

"We'll take a spin along the river road," she said. "Give me a glimpse of the fields and the golden-rod, and then take me to Mrs. Marion's, on Phillips Avenue."

"Yes, miss," said Jerry, touching his hat. "I know all the roads you like best!"

The impatient horses needed no urging. They fairly flew down the beaten track that led from the noisy, bouldered streets into the gra.s.sy byways.

On they went, past suburban orchards and outlying pastures, to the sights and sounds of the real country.

Bethany heard the slow, restful tinkle of bells in a quiet lane where the cows stood softly lowing at the bars. She heard the coo of doves in the distance, and the call of a quail in a brown stubble-field near by.

Then the wind swept up from the river, now turning red in the sunset. It put new life into her pulses, and a new light in her eyes. The weariness was all gone. The wind had blown the light, curly hair about her face, and she put up her hands to smooth it back, as they came in sight of Mrs. Marion's house.

"It doesn't make any difference," she thought. "I can run up into Cousin Ray's room and put myself in order before any one sees me."

As the carriage stopped, some one stepped up quickly to a.s.sist her alight. It was David Herschel.

"Of all times!" she thought; "when I am literally blown to pieces. How queerly things do happen in this world!"

To her still greater wonderment, instead of closing the gate after her and going on down the street, he followed her up the steps.

"Cousin Ray said this was to be a surprise," she thought. "This must be part of it."

Miss Harriet and Miss Caroline had just smoothed their plumage in the guest-chamber, and were coming down the stairs hand in hand as David and Bethany entered the reception-hall.

This was their first glimpse of David. They had been very curious to see him. Jack had talked about him so much that they recognized him instantly from his description.

Miss Caroline squeezed Miss Harriet's hand, and said in a dramatic whisper, "Sister! the surprise."

"Look at Bethany," remarked Miss Harriet. "How unusually bright she looks, and yet a little flushed and confused. I wonder if he has been saying anything to her. They came in together."