Chapter 6

THE HEAVY YOKE

The burden of ministering rested very lightly on Carol's slender shoulders. The endless procession of missionary meetings, aid societies, guilds and boards, afforded her a childish delight and did not sap her enthusiasm to the slightest degree. She went out of her little manse each new day, laughing, and returned, wearily perhaps, but still laughing. She sang light-heartedly with the youth of the church, because she was young and happy with them. She sympathized passionately with the old and sorry ones, because the richness of her own content, and the blessed perfection of her own life, made her heart tender.

Into her new life she had carried three matchless assets for a minister's wife,--a supreme confidence in the exaltation of the ministry, a boundless adoration for her husband, and a natural liking for people that made people naturally like her. Thus equipped, she faced the years of aids and missions with profound serenity.

She was sorry they hadn't more time for the honeymoon business, she and David. Honeymooning was such tremendously good fun. But they were so almost unbelievably busy all the time. On Monday David was down-town all day, attending minister's meeting and Presbytery in the morning, and looking up new books in the afternoon. Carol always joined him for lunch and they counted that noon-time hour a little oasis in a week of work. In the evening there were deacons' meetings, or trustees' meetings, or the men's Bible class. On Tuesday evening they had a Bible study class. On Wednesday evening was prayer-meeting. Thursday night, they, with several of their devoted workers, walked a mile and a half across country to Happy Hollow where they conducted mad little mission meetings. Friday night Carol met with the young women's club, and on Saturday night was a mission study class.

Carol used to sigh over the impossibility of having a beau night. She said that she had often heard that husbands couldn't be sweethearts, but she had never believed it before. Pinned down to facts, however, she admitted she preferred the husband.

Mornings Carol was busy with housework, talking to herself without intermission as she worked. And David spent long hours in his study, poring over enormous books that Carol insisted made her head ache from the outside and would probably give her infantile paralysis if she dared to peep between the covers. Afternoons were the aid societies, missionary societies, and all the rest of them, and then the endless calls,--calls on the sick, calls on the healthy, calls on the pillars, calls on the backsliders, calls on the very sad, calls on the very happy,--every varying phase of life in a church community merits a call from the minister and his wife.

The heavy yoke,--the yoke of dead routine,--dogs the footsteps of every minister, and even more, of every minister's wife. But Carol thought of the folks that fitted into the cogs of the routine to drive it round and round,--the teachers, the doctors' wives, the free-thinkers, the mothers, the professional women, the cynics, the pillars of the church,--and thinking of the folks, she forgot the routine. And so to her, routine could never prove a clog, stagnation. Every meeting brought her a fresh revelation, they amused her, those people, they puzzled her, sometimes they made her sad and frightened her, as they taught her facts of life they had gleaned from wide experience and often in bitter tears. Still, they were folks, and Carol had always had a passion for people.

David worked too hard. It was positively wicked for any human being to work as he did, and she scolded him roundly, and even went so far as to shake him, and then kissed him a dozen times to prove how very angry she was at him for abusing himself so shamefully.

David did work hard, as hard as every young minister must work to get things going right, to make his labor count. His face, always thin, was leaner, more intense than ever. His eyes were clear, far-seeing. The whiteness of his skin, amounting almost to pallor, gave him that suggestion of spirituality not infrequently seen in men of passionate consecration to a high ideal. The few graying hairs at his temples, and even the half-droop of his shoulders, added to his scholarly appearance, and Carol was firmly convinced that he was the finest-looking man in all St. Louis, and every place else for that matter.

The mad little mission, so-called because of the riotous nature of the meetings held there, was in a most flourishing condition. Everything was going beautifully for the little church in the Heights, and in their gratitude, and their happiness, Carol and David worked harder than ever,--and mutually scolded each other for the folly of it.

"I tell you this, David Arnold Duke," Carol told him sternly, "if you don't do something to that cold so you can preach without coughing, I shall do the preaching myself, and then where would you be?"

"Without a job, of course," he answered. "But you wouldn't do it. The wind has chafed your darling complexion, and you wouldn't go into the pulpit with a rough face. Your devotion to your beauty saves me."

"All very well, but maybe you think a cold-sermon is effective." Carol stood up and lifted her hand impressively. "My dear brothers and sisters,--hem-ah-hem-h-hh-em,--let us unite in reading the--ah-huh-huh-huh. Let us sing--h-h-h-h-hem--well, let us unite in prayer then--ah-chooo! ah-choooooo!"

"Where did you put those cough-drops?" he demanded. "But even at that it is better than you would do. 'Just as soon as I powder my face we will unite in singing hymn one hundred thirty-six. Oh, excuse me a minute,--I believe I feel a cold-sore coming,--I have a mirror right here, and it won't take a minute. Now, I am ready. Let us arise and sing,--but since I can not sing I will just polish my nails while the rest of you do it. Ready, go!'"

Carol laughed at the picture, but marched off for the bottle of cough medicine and the powder box, and while he carefully measured out a teaspoonful of the one for himself, she applied the other with gay devotion.

"But I truly think you should not go to Happy Hollow to-night," she said. "Mr. Baldwin will go with me, bless his faithful old pillary heart. And you ought to stay in. It is very stormy, and that long walk--"

"Oh, nonsense, a little cough like this! You are dead tired yourself; you stay at home to-night, and Baldwin and I will go. You really ought to, Carol, you are on the jump every minute. Won't you?"

"Most certainly not. I haven't a cold, have I? Maybe you want to keep me away so you can flirt with some of the Hollowers while I am out of sight. Absolutely vetoed. I go."

"Please, Carol,--won't you? Because I ask it?"

She snuggled up to him at that and said: "It's too lonesome, Davie, and I have to go to remind you of your rubbers, and to muffle up your throat. But--"

The ring of the telephone disturbed them, and she ran to answer.

"Mr. Baldwin?--Yes--Oh, that is nice of you. I've been trying to coax him to stay home myself. David, Mr. Baldwin thinks you should not go out to-night, with such a cold, and he will take the meeting, and--oh, please, honey."

David took the receiver from her hand.

"Thanks very much, Mr. Baldwin, that is mighty kind of you, but I feel fine to-night.--Oh, sure, just a little cold. Yes, of course. Come and go with us, won't you? Yes, be here about seven. Better make it a quarter earlier, it's bad walking to-night."

"David, please," coaxed Carol.

"Goosie! Who but a wife would make an invalid of a man because he sneezes?" David laughed, and Carol said no more.

But a few minutes later, as she was carefully arranging a soft fur hat over her hair and David stood patiently holding her coat, there came a light tap at the door.

"It is Mr. Daniels," said Carol. "I know his knock. Come in, Father Daniels. I knew it was you."

The old elder from next door, his gray hair standing in every direction from the wind he had encountered bareheaded, his little gray eyes twinkling bright, opened the door.

"You crazy kids aren't going down to that Hollow a night like this," he protested.

They nodded, laughing.

"Well, David can't go," he said decidedly. "That's a bad cold he's got, and it's been hanging on too long. I can't go myself for I can't walk, but I'll call up my son-in-law and make him go. So take off your hat, Parson, and-- No you come over and read the Bible to me while the young folks go gadding. I need some ministerial attention myself,--I'm wavering in my faith."

"You, wavering?" demanded David. "If no one ever wavered any harder than you do, Daniels, there wouldn't be much of a job for the preachers. And you say for me to let Carol go with Dick? What are you thinking of? I tell you when any one goes gadding with Carol, I am the man." Then he added seriously: "But really, I've got to go to-night. We're just getting hold of the folks down there and we can't let go. Otherwise, I should make Carol stay in. But the boys in her class are so fond of her that I know she is needed as much as I am."

"But that cough--"

"Oh, that cough is all right. It will go when spring comes. I just haven't had a chance to rest my throat. I feel fine to-night. Come on in, Baldwin. Yes, we are ready. Still snowing? Well, a little snow-- Here, Carol, you must wear your gaiters. I'll buckle them."

A little later they set out, the three of them, heads lowered against the driving snow. There were no cars running across country, and indeed not even sidewalks, since it was an unfrequented part of the town with no residences for many blocks until one reached the little, tumbledown section in the Hollow. Here and there were heavy drifts, and now and then an unexpected ditch in the path gave Carol a tumble into the snow, but, laughing and breathless, she was pulled out again and they plodded heavily on.

In spite of the inclement weather, the tiny house--called a mission by grace of speech--was well and noisily filled. Over sixty people were crowded into the two small rooms, most of them boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen, laughing, coughing, dragging their feet, shoving the heavy benches, dropping song-books. They greeted the snow-covered trio with a royal roar, and a few minutes later were singing, "Yes, we'll gather at the river," at the tops of their discordant voices. Carol sat at the wheezy organ, painfully pounding out the rhythmic notes,--no musician she, but willing to do anything in a pinch. And although at the pretty little church up in the Heights she never attempted to lift her voice in song, down at the mission she felt herself right in her element and sang with gay good-will, happy in the knowledge that she came as near holding to the tune as half the others.

Most of the evening was spent in song, David standing in the narrow doorway between the two rooms, nodding this way, nodding that, in a futile effort to keep a semblance of time among the boisterous worshipers. A short reading from the Bible, a very brief prayer, a short, conversational story-talk from David, and the meeting broke up in wild clamor.

Then back through the driving snow they made their way, considering the evening well worth all the exertion it had required.

Once inside the cozy manse, David and Carol hastily changed into warm dressing-gowns and slippers and lounged lazily before the big fireplace, sipping hot coffee, and talking, always talking of the work,--what must be done to-morrow, what could be arranged for Sunday, the young people's meeting, the primary department, the mission study class.

And Carol brought out the big bottle and administered the designated teaspoonful.

"For you must quit coughing, David," she said. "You ruined two good points last Sunday by clearing your throat in the middle of a phrase. And it isn't so easy making points as that."

"Aren't you tired of hearing me preach, Carol? We've been married a whole year now. Aren't you finding my sermons monotonous?"

"David," she said earnestly, resting her head against his shoulder, partly for weariness, partly for the pleasure of feeling the rise and fall of his breast,--"when you go up into the pulpit you look so white and good, like an apostle or a good angel, it almost frightens me. I think, 'Oh, no, he isn't my husband, not really,--he is just a good angel God sent to keep me out of mischief.' And while you are preaching I never think, 'He is mine.' I always think, 'He is God's.'"

Tears came into her eyes as she spoke, and David drew her close in his arms.

"Do you, sweetheart? It seems a terrible thing to stand up there before a houseful, of people, most of them good, and clean, and full of faith, and try to direct their steps in the broader road. I sometimes feel that men are not fit for it. There ought to be angels from Heaven."

"But there are angels from Heaven watching over them, David, guiding them, showing them how. I believe good white angels are guiding every true minister,--not the bad ones-- Oh, I know a lot about ministers, honey,--proud, ambitious, selfish, vainglorious, hypocritical, even amorous, a lot of them,--but there are others, true ones,--you, David, and some more. They just have to grow together until harvest, and then the false ones will be dug up and dumped in the garbage."

For a while they were silent.

Finally he asked, smiling a little, "Are you getting cramped, Carol? Are you getting narrow, and settling down to a rut? Have you lost your enthusiasm and your sparkle?"

Carol laughed at him. "David, do you remember the first night we were married, when we knelt down together to say our prayers and you put your arm around my shoulder, and we prayed there, side by side? Dearest, that one little fifteen minutes of confidence and humility and heart-gratitude was worth all the sparkle and fire in the world. But have I lost it? Seems to me I am as much a shouting Methodist as ever."

David laughed, coughing a little, and Carol bustled him off to bed, sure he was catching a brand new cold, and berating herself roundly for allowing this foolish angel of hers to get a chill right on her very hands.