“It evidently didn’t,” Mrs. Vanderpool
interjected.
Cresswell arose. “I tell you, Mr. Easterly,
I object—it mustn’t go through.”
He took his leave.
Mrs. Vanderpool did not readily give up her plea for
Alwyn, and bade Zora get Mr. Smith on the telephone
for discussion.
“Well,” reported Easterly, hanging up
the receiver, “we may land him. It seems
that he is engaged to a Washington school-teacher,
and Smith says she has him well in hand. She’s
a pretty shrewd proposition, and understands that
Alwyn’s only chance now lies in keeping his mouth
shut. We may land him,” he repeated.
“Engaged!” gasped Mrs. Vanderpool.
Zora quietly closed the door.
Twenty-seven
How Zora found the little church she never knew; but
somehow, in the long dark wanderings which she had
fallen into the habit of taking at nightfall, she
stood one evening before it. It looked warm, and
she was cold. It was full of her people, and
she was very, very lonely. She sat in a back
seat, and saw with unseeing eyes. She said again,
as she had said to herself a hundred times, that it
was all right and just what she had expected.
What else could she have dreamed? That he should
ever marry her was beyond possibility; that had been
settled long since—there where the tall,
dark pines, wan with the shades of evening, cast their
haunting shadows across the Silver Fleece and half
hid the blood-washed west. After that
he would marry some one else, of course; some good
and pure woman who would help and uplift and serve
him.
She had dreamed that she would help—unknown,
unseen—and perhaps she had helped a little
through Mrs. Vanderpool. It was all right, and
yet why so suddenly had the threads of life let go?
Why was she drifting in vast waters; in uncharted
wastes of sea? Why was the puzzle of life suddenly
so intricate when but a little week ago she was reading
it, and its beauty and wisdom and power were thrilling
her delighted hands? Could it be possible that
all unconsciously she had dared dream a forbidden
dream? No, she had always rejected it. When
no one else had the right; when no one thought; when
no one cared, she had hovered over his soul as some
dark guardian angel; but now, now somebody else was
receiving his gratitude. It was all right, she
supposed; but she, the outcast child of the swamp,
what was there for her to do in the great world—her,
the burden of whose sin—
But then came the voice of the preacher: "Behold
the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.”
She found herself all at once intently listening.
She had been to church many times before, but under
the sermons and ceremonies she had always sat coldly
inert. In the South the cries, contortions, and
religious frenzy left her mind untouched; she did
not laugh or mock, she simply sat and watched and
wondered. At the North, in the white churches,
she enjoyed the beauty of wall, windows, and hymn,
liked the voice and surplice of the preacher; but
his words had no reference to anything in which she
was interested. Here suddenly came an earnest
voice addressed, by singular chance, to her of all
the world.
